Album Review

Rose Elinor Dougall – Find Me Out

• 20th May 2010

Rose Elinor Dougall has proven herself to be a solo artist of admirable strength. Following on from her days as a Pipette, she has released several singles, each met more than well by the mainstream music media. She is inkeeping with today’s slyle of folk-ish music, without sounding samey and her latest single “Find Me Out” bares testament to that.

Musically it’s a really great song. Dougall clearly understands how to piece together the individual parts to achieve an overall effect, and she is able to catch your ear with a second-long tinkling of piano keys. But it falls down vocally. “Find Me Out” is ever so slightly lacking in lyrical, melodic and tonal variation, which in a song which is barely not acoustic and therefore so dependent on the quality of its vocals, leaves it feeling a little flat.

The B-Side, “I Know We’ll Never” (acoustic version) suffers from the same problem. The guitar is skillful and beautiful, but the lyrics are just short of emotive and sung with the same unsympathetic tone, which is becoming all too common with today’s female folksters, it doesn’t quite hit the spot.

This is a single to be appreciated for its musical expertise; perhaps with her next release we will hear Dougall putting the same passion into her melodies.