About this item

English songsmith Douglas Dare returns with his third and most stripped back studio album to date, "Milkteeth". Produced by Mike Lindsay - founding member of Tunng and one half of LUMP with Laura Marling - in his studio in Margate in just twelve days, "Milkteeth" sees Douglas become confident and comfortable enough with his own identity to reflect on both the joys and pains of youth. In doing so, he has established himself as a serious 21st century singer-songwriter with an enduring lyrical poise and elegant minimalist sound.

Douglas Dare grew up on a farm as the youngest member of a large extended family, where he was often found in his own private world, dancing in his mother’s pink ballet dress. 'Only now do I feel free to express my inner child again, and am giving myself permission to play dress up,' says Dare of Milkteeth’s cover shot, in which he wears soft makeup and is draped with layers of white linen, acting the part of a Greek muse. 'I never felt like I fit in. I was different, odd. I wanted to dance and sing and dress up and on a small farm in rural Dorset that really stuck out.'

Where previously he has been known as a piano player, for "Milkteeth" Dare picked up a new instrument, the autoharp, and as soon as he sat down with it, songs poured out – he wrote the album’s first single "Silly Games", in under an hour. 'Instinctual feelings about childhood and innocence were the catalyst,' he explains. 'Then with the autoharp, it all just clicked – I could see the album laid out ahead of me.'

Dare’s music speaks of his own experiences of universal themes like love, loss, and childhood. Perhaps most importantly, his music gives a voice and a sanctuary to anyone who’s ever felt unusual or out of place. Whether he’s singing of the pain of those in the Magdalene Laundries as on Whelm, describing coming out to his parents on Aforger, or processing his own childhood isolation on Milkteeth, Dare has a graceful honesty and an abiding clarity of vision in his simple and distinctive sound.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Tender ballads of loss and hope, brittle instrumentation and Dare's rich syrupy vocals combine into an atmospherically rich but instrumentally minimalistic suite of heartfelt ballads and hypnotic, swimming bliss.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Am Free
2. Red Arrows
3. Heavenly Bodies
4. The Piano Room
5. Silly Games
6. The Joy In Sarah’s Eyes
7. The Stairwell
8. Whereever You Are
9. The Window
10. The Playground
11. Run