The sound of Doves in flight

Manchester band spread their musical wings on new CD

You could never accuse Manchester band Doves of rushing the creative process. The trio have been playing together for over 20 years, first as Sub Sub, then, since 1998, as Doves, and they have only released four albums.
Their brand new disc, Kingdom Of Rust, comes just over four years after their very successful third disc, Some Cities (it went to No. 1 in the U.K.), but the group’s large fan base will find it worth the wait. It has been receiving rave reviews in the U.K., and Doves have just completed a sold-out tour of their homeland, a market in which they are definitely one of the biggest bands around.
“It feels very good for us to be out playing live, delivering the medicine,” guitarist/singer Jez Williams told Tandem recently. Chatting with us the night before Doves left for a North American tour that brings them to Kool Haus on June 1, he was unapologetic about the long gap between albums.
“It’s tricky for any band to come up with a fourth album. I believe you have to do something different, something you haven’t done before. Bands that follow the formula for too long will evaporate, and we’ve never been about that. With this one, we didn’t really know what to look for. We just knew we had to try things, and that took time. There was a lot of trial and error as we searched, but we stumbled upon things as we went along. Plus, we took time off to build a studio, and before you know it, four years have gone.”
A couple of tracks on Kingdom Of Rust were recorded at legendary Welsh studio Rockfield with veteran producer John Leckie (Stone Roses, Magazine), but Williams terms that “pretty much a waste of time. We came to realize we wanted to go back to how we made the first album [ 2000’s Lost Souls], and we self-produced it with Dan Austin. That felt like going back to our roots, not necessarily musically, but in the working process.”
Joining Jez in Doves is his twin brother, drummer Andy Williams, and their boyhood pal, bassist/singer Jimi Goodwin. The three met in high school, but played in separate bands. They reconnected in 1989 at, fittingly, the Hacienda, the famed nightclub owned by Manchester’s musical heroes New Order, a band Williams credits for providing a positive example.
“You get inspired by your peers. Growing up, there were bands like New Order and the Smiths. That was our era, and we were inspired by New Order doing it on their own terms. They were their own record label, they opened up a nightclub and were very influential on the city’s nightlife. For us, they were the people around the corner, so it was ‘If they can do it, I’ll have a go at it.’ To escape from Manchester, it’s either music or football, and we were shite at football!”
Critics often lazily lump Doves in with the likes of Coldplay and Radiohead, given their similarly atmospheric and epic sound, but groups such as New Order and Stone Roses make better reference points. They deserve credit for a varied sound on Kingdom Of Rust, something that Williams says they consciously sought. “Our opening track, ‘Jetstream,’ has a cold and stark Germanic sound, but the next song, ‘Kingdom Of Rust,’ is country-tinged. You could argue that they are opposing teams, but we wanted to write a very schizophrenic album, with almost every track opposing the previous one. We thought that would be a cool approach. Our worry was ‘Would it be cohesive?’ but we got away with it because it’s got our DNA on it.”
Speaking of DNA, Williams notes that “in Doves, we are all brothers in a way, and two of us are biological brothers. It’s like a family unit, a three-headed monster, and it’s so intuitive it’s sometimes scary!” So no sibling fighting, as with those other Manchester rock star brothers, the Gallaghers of Oasis? “No, we’re more laidback,” laughs Jez Williams. “We did a lot of fighting at 15 and got it out of our system then.”


Kingdom Of Rust is out on Virgin/EMI Canada. Doves play Kool Haus on June 1.

Publication Date: 2009-05-24
Story Location: http://www.tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=9154