Recently the BBC broadcast a wonderful programme from their Imagine series on Simon and Garfunkel – The Harmony Game, infact at the time of writing this programme is still available to watch on BBC iplayer at the following link.

The purpose of opening with Simon and Garfunkel? Well that’s the overall impression you get of Don Scannell when you listen to his debut album Three Silver Pieces. The only problem with Three Silver Pieces is that at the halfway point the downbeat folk influenced music becomes a little too heavy on the ears and there is almost a crying out for a little variety in what Mr Scannell has to offer.

However, here’s the interesting bit, for all Three Silver Pieces is too much to stomach in one sitting, extract tracks from the album and take them on their own and there is a realisation that they are absolute gems – which you may have realised when you listened to the album, but rejected as fatigue set in.

Take for example, soon to be released single Mystery. The opening rapid four beat drum rhythm is courteously of Asian Dub Foundation’s Martin Savale, but on this occasion we are not in the realms of rapcore or dub, instead it is a rather uplifting rapid pace over which Don can voice his softly expressed words. The lyrics themselves have a warmth and are completely in fitting with Don’s later insistence of ‘holding up your heart’ as the track celebrates the emergence of happiness in another human after ‘four years of pain’. There is something lifting about the harmonies that Don creates throughout Mystery, with the acoustic guitar providing able support whilst a cello provides an underlying theme, before a piano joins in the glorious party without the drum ever dropping its frenetic pace. In addition to the wonderful track that is Mystery, there is also a delightful video to go with it, utilising marionette’s from the Little Angel Theatre, which you can watch below.

So lift up your heart for Mystery and maybe take a second listen to Three Silver Pieces, after all if you watch the Imagine programme of Simon and Garfunkel, there nearly wasn’t a third verse to Bridge Over Troubled Water and where would we have been without that immortal opening third verse “Sail on silver girl, sail on by, your time has come to shine, all your dreams are on their way”

Reviewed by Jimbo Walsh.

Don Scannell's single Mystery is out on 5 December 2011, with the album Three Silver Pieces available to download from Amazon now.