Dolittle - “Hello To The Fortunate Few” (Visual CD Review)
Mario Sughi is an Italian artist/illustrator living and working in Dublin. We invited Mario to visually review the fantastic album from Dolittle, “Hello To The Fortunate Few”.
Dolittle is made up out of Ange Dolittle (whence the name), Mr. G, and Rich they perform mainly songs by Eat / We Know Where You Live / Big Yoga Muffin.
Mario Sughi - ‘Not much fun being dumb’ got me immediately tuned to what I was going to find later on in the ‘Hello to the Fortunate Few’ album: a lot of rhythm, a vibrant guitar, a lot of movement and voices and therefore a lot of tension. That song brought me into a town landscape on which a man without a name wanders.
As this man crosses the city (and after all he could even be a woman!) he keeps his eyes wide open to all his surroundings (he is almost captured by what happens around him), and as at times he gets back to himself you can feel a sense of distress. Seemingly this sense of distress is caused by an inside and outside conflict, and this conflict is emphasized in the sentence
“and everybody wants to be more crazy
than the crazy one they’re standing next to
the crazy people seem to be the only ones
who are really having fun”
(this is the sentence that inspired my first illustration)
In my idea of fun our man’s attraction to his girlfriend emerges very clearly, but we learn immediately that this relationship too is one full of conflicts. Those conflicts are an introduction to a violent sense of despair that will become the subject of all the remaining lyrics. From Shame, “I ‘m gonna come around and cut your face” and from “Love Kills “ love kills just as a photograph” come the inspiration of my second and third illustrations
There is irony in this album, to the point that we can not but end to like this violent man (whose name and identity we still don’t know “ don’t ask who I am”), and this kind of irony is of a similar nature to the one I would like to transfer on all the pages of my cartoons and illustrations.
text and illustrations by Mario Sughi www.nerosunero.org
Video by ‘Roy I’
Hello to the Fortunate Few - tracklisting:
1. NOT MUCH FUN BEING DUMB
2. TRAGEDIES OF LIFE
3. ME & LIBBY
4. DON’T WANNA GO OUT LIKE PRESLEY
5. SHAME
6. HEY FREAKLIPS
7. MY IDEA OF FUN
8. CONFESSIONS OF A THUG
9. ON THE ROPES
10. LOVE KILLS
11. EPICURE
12. hidden track: (A LITTLE) SHAME
produced by:
matt terry and miles hunt.
record label:
Punk Elvis Records - Cat. N°. PELVIS 003CD
Photo by thomaseagle http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomaseagle/
For more info on Dolittle check out