| How do you Dø?
Historically, when musicians have experienced life-changing losses, it’s often led them to pick up acoustic guitars and bare their emotions with a back-to-basics approach. But for “Shake, Shook, Shaken,” the members of the Dø (pronounced “dough”) went the opposite way. When composing the album, core collaborators Olivia Merilahti and Dan Levy limited themselves to a keyboard and computer, rejecting the rock instincts that defined their first two albums. In doing so, they risked creating something robotic and detached, rather than forming an organic connection with their grief. “Yeah, I’ve been reflecting on that as well,” says Merilahti. “Maybe there’s something a little cold on the digital side of the instruments that we used, like virtual instruments and plug-ins and drum machines. But actually, it was so new and unfamiliar for us that we could express our music in a whole different way.” Both musicians had dealt with the deaths of family members and friends in 2012, when they began preparing the material for the album. Levy also had reached the end of a serious relationship. “In the beginning, there must have been something sort of cold-hearted,” says Merilahti. “But the second part of the process was to add warmth and humanity and tenderness to it.” The effect is like a carnival scene in a horror movie, when happy music is overpowered by the ominous tone of an approaching darkness. Merilahti’s airy singing seems to struggle constantly not to be pulled down by the icy keyboard sounds that created the album’s foundation. Sometimes she succumbs; mostly she triumphs. “Either you just feel sorry for yourself and see yourself as a victim, or you just take a step back and push yourself into the universe,” she says. “There is something philosophical in the question of what we are and the immensity of it, but it’s also very simple.” She deals with this paradox best on “Trustful Hands,” where she seems to distance herself from her sadness by scientifically classifying humans as “sentimental animals,” yet her voice cracks with emotion. In the song’s most victorious passage, she sings, “chaos is my second home, I don’t mind where I land, as long as I’m in trustful hands.”
With Levy, Merilahti truly does seem to feel like she’s in secure hands. The pair began making music together a little more than a decade ago, scoring the French film “Empire of the Wolves.” Courage and chaos are recurring themes on “Shake, Shook, Shaken,” and in conversation Merilahti is quick to praise her musical partner’s fortitude. “Courage, I think, is one of the things I value most — maybe because I’m afraid of everything,” she says with a light laugh. “We like to challenge each other a lot, Dan and I. That’s how we work, and that’s how we move on from one thing to another. It takes a little courage.” Courage and chaos also manifest themselves in the music itself, as the Dø allow their experimental whims the freedom to disrupt compositional integrity. Just because Merilahti is singing a pretty pop melody doesn’t mean it can’t be chopped up digitally. Merilahti, who grew up in Finland and moved to France, has also demonstrated courage in singing in a language that is not native to her. It’s paid off: The band’s 2008 debut was the first English-language album by a French act to top the French charts. English is neither musician’s native tongue, but Merilahti says her “poetic vocabulary is almost more developed in English than it is in French.” Levy prefers to answer interview questions by e-mail, since his English is not as fluid. Still, his typed responses are poetic. “Sometimes it takes courage to transform strong emotions into music,” he writes. “I’m not putting my life in danger in the studio, but it’s about overcoming some very uncomfortable moments that are part of the process.” He downplays any heroism that Merilahti may have heaped upon him, but acknowledges how important it was for the pair to musically overcome those uncomfortable moments: “Olivia and I made music to heal our wounds on this one. There’s a sense of emergency as opposed to a need.” Merilahti agrees. “I think music was the only way for us to survive and get ourselves out of the difficult situations we were in,” she says. “It was definitely the only solid branch we had to hold onto.” Merilahti says the pair also found inspiration from some unlikely sources. She name-checks South African rap act Die Antwoord and dance punks LCD Soundsystem, but perhaps the biggest influence was Kanye West, whose album “Yeezus” came out while the duo was recording. “It was kind of just perfect timing, because it’s the kind of album that nourishes and feeds a musician in the studio, and that’s what we needed at the time,” she says. “It almost encouraged us to keep going in the direction that we had already taken, which was trying to make it more minimal and a little raw as well. That was very inspiring, because you listen to that, and it kicks you in the ass and it gives you the energy that you need.”Back |
