Looks like a good year with Doves, Coldplay, Oasis, Sigur Ros and Idlewild releasing new records..
Doves review:
DOVES : 10 JAN 2005
DOVES NEW ALBUM DETAILS - SOME CITIES
If the first two Doves albums, 'Lost Souls' and 'The Last Broadcast',were records that sounded like they were conceived in Glastonbury-like vast open plains, each number a snapshot of the wide open countrysideor of the rolling sea, then their third album, 'Some Cities', paints
altogether different pictures. At points it's crunching and urban, sounding like a midnight high-speed joy ride through the industrial
beating heart of the city (most noticeably on the turbo charged first single 'Black And White Town'). At others, it's like a long lost
soundtrack to some early '60s kitchen sink drama ('Someday Soon','Shadows Of Salford'). 'Some Cities' could only ever have been born in
the North of England and is the sound of a full throttle Doves band.
It's also the sound of the band at their most relaxed and confident, their most driven and fine-tuned.'Some Cities' arrives almost three years after 'The Last Broadcast'.
Conceived as a shorter, more forceful record than its two predecessors, the record was written primarily in cottages and holiday rents around the UK (Snowdonia, Darlington and Youlgreave in the Peak District) and recorded with Ben Hillier (producer of Blur's "Think Tank" & Elbow's "Cast Of Thousands") in Liverpool, Brixton and Loch
Ness. Inspired initially by "being shocked and excited at seeing Manchester change every time we came back from touring" (Jimi) and, musically, at least in part, by their brief between album DJing hobby where the band moved from town to town playing a fiercely ramshackle selection of Northern Soul and acid house.
'Some Cities' is a record informed by, but never overpowered by these musical styles, each adding its own unique metronomic stomp to the songs (particularly on 'Black & White Town' and 'Almost Forgot Myself'). On the whole, the record does what the band set out to achieve in evoking the changing face of the North of England - you can
hear in the music an inner-city grime running through the album, nowhere more so than on the title track with the huge backbreaking
rumble of drums that sound like heavy machinery being forcibly dismantled (and guitar line that could almost be early Fall); 'Shadows Of Salford' sounds like a ghostly lullaby whistling past your ears as you stroll along the same night-time streets that 'One Of These Days' and 'Sky Starts Falling' both joyride through at whip crack speed.
'Someday Soon' could be some dusty misplaced master tapes from the soundtrack of a Rita Tushingham or Tom Courtney slice-of-life movie,
all acoustic guitars swooping and diving around waltz time percussion and a truly celestial flute loop.
Final track 'Ambition' evokes nothing less than the Velvet Underground playing live in Heaven, like watching the sunrise from a tenth story
window in the middle of the city while the world starts to crawl about way below you. The only real times the record steps away from the city
are during 'The Storm', a rolling, lolloping piano and orchestral piece that sounds something like "Hot Buttered Soul" recorded in freak
weather conditions out on the Pennines (described by Jimi as sounding "like hotwiring a massive orchestra up to a transistor radio") and the
sweeping, monumental 'Snowden', a song written in the shadow of and obviously inspired by a very big, very beautiful mountain.
'Some Cities' then, is their most concise, brutal, driving, beautiful,relentless, solid, brilliant record to date.
Some Cities - tracklist:
1. Some Cities
2. Black And White Town
3. Almost Forgot Myself
4. Snowden
5. The Storm
6. Walk In Fire
7. One Of These Days
8. Someday Soon
9. Shadows Of Salford
10. Sky Starts Falling
11. Ambition
