Don Mescall is a Limerick-raised singer-songwriter who has been plying his trade on London’s music circuit for almost 20 years. Innocent Run, his debut album, should have been an impressive culmination of two decades’ worth of experience, but instead feels like a regrettable last-ditch compromise.
A team of super-producers (who have, between them, worked with acts as diverse as Boyzone, Dido and Nelly) do their best to squeeze these songs dry of any homespun, craftsman-like charm they may once have possessed. More often then not, they succeed.
The album opens with ‘Trouble Is’, the song that kicked off the industry buzz surrounding Mescall. A lacklustre piece of airbrushed AOR, it has been at the centre of a mystifying tug-of-love between the likes of LeeAnn Rimes, Aerosmith and Backstreet Boys, who have all been eager to record cover versions. This time next year, expect to see an RTE documentary celebrating the “triumph” of this song going from “humble Irish beginnings” to worldwide success, a la ‘You Raise Me Up’. (Always nice to be reminded that our own little country punches way above its weight in the Popularising Joyless MOR Dross stakes, isn’t it?)
Innocent Run does rally briefly in its mid-section, though. The title track possesses a haunting, lullaby-like quality; its nicely world-weary vocal evoking folk-grunge balladeer Lou Barlow, while ‘Not Enough Rainbows’ is the closest Mescall comes to appearing graceful.
Well-crafted moments like these are few and far between, though. All rough edges have been given a boringly smooth finish, and Mescall would be sensible to try something more lo-fi next time out. Those with the patience to scrape away the layers of production may be intermittently rewarded, but few will see the point in trying.