Gritty, urban, northern, the sound of bad architecture being torn down, Doves deliver a third album (proper) with an earthy, hands on feel and with a healthy dose of new songs that shows that they are certainly not suffering from any kind of burn out. ‘Some Cities’ is a thrillingly metronomic, hypnotic, impulsive record that casts a disparaging glare over the decimation of urban communities. It’s no holds barred, hand on heart and heart on sleeve documentation of the bands time spent in and around Manchester and its satellite towns. The streets of their youth, the streets to which they now proffer this long player.

The album opens with the direct no nonsense of the title track, it’s a forceful, aggressive pounding salvo of insistent noise overlain with discordant, detuned guitar lines that would only be at home in the mean streets that they detail. Without pausing ‘Black and White Town’ serves up more of the same, a dynamic melody driven rhythm pinned together by the trademark pounding drums. Similarly detuned piano chords are beaten out of some god forsaken keyboard in this exhilarating late night, high speed, joyride through the streets of your town. There is that undeniable feel of a gallant three piece, in the time served tradition of The Jam, Hendrix and, dare I say it, Nirvana that leaves the listener on the edge. There is nothing cosy, nothing easy listening about this.

‘Snowden’ is an altogether more even paced, more melodic affair, with timely bursts of insistency – as though the soundscape cannot hold in the energy of Doves, it spills from the sides and bursts through the seams, impossible to contain. It is a sweeping, gloriously monumental epic; seemingly (sonically at least) a soundtrack to vast panoramic, wide open spaces. There is a definite feeling of two diverse points of reference here, the urban to the rural, and considering the subject matter, and the writing and recording locations (holiday cottages in Snowdonia, the Peak District and Loch Ness) it’s easy to see how surroundings have had a definite impact on sound. The thing is, you can take the boys out of the city, but can you take the city out of the boys?

Following neatly on from ‘Snowden’ is the swooning, brooding, breathless ‘The Storm’ (featuring elements of Ryuchi Sakamotos ‘Snake Eyes’ score). This is a swaggering and menacing, yet strangely uplifting orchestration which has undeniable tinges of Matt Johnson and ‘The The’, especially the ‘Mind Bomb’ era. All this may sound suspiciously like Doves of old, whilst ‘Walk in Fire’ lifts a melody direct from the good old king of rock and roll himself, Mr. Elvis Aaron Presley, indeed, this is how ‘Suspicious Minds’ would have ended up had the old hip wiggler been around today. It’s also a bit U2-ish if that’s any kind of reference.

The undoubted high points of the album are the two consecutive quasi ballads of ‘Someday Soon’ and ‘Shadows of Salford’. The former is a heartfelt, despondent acoustic driven sub-lullaby, laced with haunting, lilting backing vocals laden with melancholy and loss, littered with sensitive, gently caressing guitar lines...

“Someday soon, you’ll know how it feels to love someone;
someday soon, you’ll know how it feels to trust someone.”

The latter, ‘Shadows of Salford’ is a plaintive piano driven ballad mourning the loss of the heart and character of a city. It evokes images of the 1950’s, of terraced streets and tenements, they might not have had it all, but they had spirit. This song eschews the sentiments of all those old kitchen sink dramas, ‘A Taste of Honey’, ‘Saturday Night, Sunday Morning’. Close your eyes and you can see Rita Tushingham dragging herself and her bags of shopping through the gloomy, rain-soaked grey, miserable streets of some northern town.

‘Sky Starts Falling’ is a much more up-tempo, funky, blisteringly melodic number, direct from the ‘How to Write a Doves Song Handbook’. The relentless rhythm is there, the guitar lead missiles of sound tearing apart the breaks are as evident as ever, exploding in your ears and sweeping you along on a wave of desperation. Doves finally stamp their mark indelibly on this record, they say this is us, this is what we do, they are uncompromising and sure in their songs; and rightly so. ‘Ambition’ closes the record as a long suffering lament, a desperate plea from the edges, atmospheric and sentimental, it’s a heartbreaker.

The general feeling of the record is again that of the underdog, written from a perspective of desolation and desperation, of loss and of loathing but all the time laced with an intrinsic sense of self belief, of optimism and understated euphoria. Somehow the positivity surges through the hopelessness. Not bad for three scruffy kids from a north western satellite town.

Johnny Mac

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