DOUG GAY - ALL THE OTHER PEOPLE

For a musical template on his second solo record, Doug Gay has jumped back over his debut, Life After Death, to a sound more in keeping with his days as front man in Calvin’s Dream and Candy Says. Dreamed Of A Man and Storms are driven along with guitars. Q Blues then seems to shift pace before duelling guitars wrestle in the Qoloheth.

The centre of the record shifts, revealing the different textures that Gay can conjure in. The atmospheric That Night the Snow Fell and the heart break ballad Never Thought That You Would Leave. By album’s end, however, we are back in the early 90s with Your Face a song that would have fitted perfectly on Calvin’s Dream’s Fanatical record.

Indeed Your Face maybe best reveals Doug Gay’s uniqueness. Who else would even try to put his two loves, for deep theology and  The Velvet Underground and squeeze it all into 3 minutes. Bono dreams! 

Even thirty years ago, in his days as front man in Glasgow garage band Calvin’s Dream, Doug Gay was talking about his songs as ways to wrestle with his Protestant identity. Growing up in a Plymouth Brethren Church and ending up as a minister in the Church of Scotland, he has much to struggle with. 

This upbringing certainly gives Doug plenty to interrogate both in his own bruised soul as well as in theology and spiritual outworking. On The Old Gospel Hall he takes a nostalgic remembrance and finds the crux:

 

Oh the threat of death – and the gift of life

that you advertise, you advertise

but there is more - more to life than this 

I realise I realise

 

The follow on track When My Ship Comes In might be my personal favourite. Doug and I have a mentor called Andy Thornton and we both love a song of Andy’s called Stone Cold Winter. Had I still a radio show I’d play these two songs together. Songs of the wild open spaces of life in all its fulness:

 

Something wild enough to want

something strong enough to trust

something deep enough to love

something free enough to follow after

 

I have found myself in my car this past week, singing aloud to that chorus, claiming it as my own raison d’etre. The catchiest personal mission statement ever.

Which is where my Surmising concluded. Everyone of these songs are so full of ear candy. Wonderful melodies and choruses. New but familiar. I looked back and realised that I shouldn’t be surprised. If the Candy Says song One Track Heart had been played on the stage of CBGBs in the late 70 and if Calvin’s Dream’s What Kind Of Love had been on any of REM’s early 90s records Doug Gay would be all over our radios.

And I haven’t even mentioned that voice. Huge, warm, emotional, evocative and inviting… perfect for both the pastoral and the prophetic and for songs like these.

 

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