On October 22nd 2021 Doves dropped the news that all of their upcoming live dates would be cancelled due to reasons well documented. Me, like many of you, no doubt, thought that would be end for Doves. Even Jez & Andy have said since that they initially thought that could be it for the band:
Jez: “It was 50/50 about what the future would look like for Doves for a minute. Then we put some time in and started writing again for this album. That’s what saved us.”
Soon after, the band had to vacate their longtime Cheshire farm studio. Another omen that maybe suggested the end for Doves, though both circumstances were not connected. Andy & Jez kept themselves busy and were briefly back in the public spotlight in April 2022 when Jake Bugg released a track called Seven Bridge Road which was co-written by Andy & Jez.. Then in July of 2022, the music they scored for the soundtrack to Freddie Flintoff’s BBC TV show, Field of Dreams got it’s TV debut. As the show wasn’t aired outside the UK, I can’t comment on the music sadly as I never got to hear it. But by all accounts it was very Doves and suited the show.
Jimi also kept busy working with various hip-hop artists. He released his first NightjaR single Baby Don’t (feat Sonnyjim & Quelle) on April 19th 2024 on Lewis Recordings. A full NightjaR record would follow on June 21st of 2024. The album would feature a full cast of collaborators, including Jason Williamson, who MC’d one of the LP highlight’s Blood Red Dead. Whilst the album is a complete departure from Doves, of course. It didn’t go a miss with some fans of Doves who recognized the sound on one of the tracks that was originally used on an old Doves b-side.
Also in the world of Doves, released on April 29th 2022, Lost Covers: A Tribute to Doves was released. A collaboration by fans of Doves to cover Doves’ songs, led by Chris Kelly. Fans who downloaded the album were encouraged to donate money to Mental Health UK. You can listen to the album at lostcovers.com
What we didn’t know was that Jez & Andy hadn’t completely shut the door on Doves.
“Music itself is pure escapism, so when you work in this nice little sort of bubble, you’re having a break from normality” Jez
“There was a loose thread that kicked the record off,” Jimi told NME. “‘Renegade’ was the first thing that we did together for it. In our minds, it’s got a Blade Runner-esque theme. It was inspired by the Roy Batty speech of how nothing lasts forever, you know, ‘I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe’.”
Jez: “This is quite a dark album. We started to write it after we cancelled ‘The Universal Want’ tour, so some of the songs reflect that. We wanted ‘Renegade’ to start with this apocalyptic atmosphere. That’s what felt right for us after such a difficult time. Jimi was with us, but we were trying to make sense of all the mess – and that fed into the album.”
“We’re living in pretty fucking horrible times, so we wanted to reflect that but give a little hope. When you listen to Neil Young, it feels like he understands you. It’s music that can hold your hand in this dark world. I see this as a future soul album for outsiders. We want you to feel understood.”
Renegade
Andy: “As a vocalist, Jimi always brings an authenticity. This was just the rough guide vocal; there are loads of imperfections on it, but he just nailed the mood of the song. That emotion is a million times more important than anything else. Musically, it feels quite dystopian. We were going for a bit of a Scott Walker vibe. There was a lyric in there about Piccadilly Circus and someone said, ‘Why don’t you change it to Piccadilly Gardens?’ To me, the song is like Scott Walker walking around Manchester in the year 2025.”
“We love Blade Runner. It’s almost like, ‘What would happen if Blade Runner was set in Manchester?’ The chorus, I stole the line from Blade Runner, which is, ‘If you could have only seen what I’ve seen with your eyes, then you will know that everything expires.’
Cold Dreaming
Cold Dreaming is a track that has been around for quite some time. Black Rivers shared a snippet of the track back in May 2018.
Andy: “We love David Axelrod and Rotary Connection. That was our attempt at creating a song from that era.”
Jez: “But hopefully with a modern twist. We’re not interested in replicating the past; we’ve always taken sonics from all sorts of places. There’s always an undercurrent of abstract atmospheres underneath the music, moving it. We were always obsessed with Northern Soul, and we wanted to write our version of a cinematic Northern Soul song. Jimi wasn’t around, so Andy and I took the vocal duties on that one.
We just wanted to go for a really wide panoramic, filmic sound. Lyrically, it’s all about anxiety and trying to move on from it.”
Andy “Cold Dreaming’ is a song about forgiveness. Trying to forgive and move on. As a minimum, these days, resilience is the thing that you need more than ever, certainly as a musician. Perhaps the lyrics do touch a bit on what we’ve been through.”
On the recyclying of a previously used guitar riff, Jez adds: “It’s in three songs and it’s the same riff, although I can’t recall which one! It’s really strange, this riff, because it works in a lot of Doves songs, for some reason. What’s quite fun about it is dressing it up, where people don’t know, or don’t immediately recognise it. Some do. ‘Jetstream’ was when it was first used, and it’s resurfaced again on ‘Cold Dreaming’. Is it ‘10.03’? it’s definitely in one more.”
“I personally think the riff is so good we can definitely use it. I’m looking to use it in something else and hide it! Why not? The thing about music, I always think, now we’re a bit older, I literally don’t care. It’s about having the freedom to do what you want. I think we can now; I think we’ve earnt that right.”
In the Butterfly House
Andy: “This was one that Jez brought in quite early on. I really thought about the lyrical content of the song. The music was suggesting something, but I couldn’t quite grapple with what it was. I’ve always been interested in the history of murder ballads, so I thought of the image of a butterfly house where something had gone on there. I tried to create a little story about somebody coming back at night to this butterfly house and something had happened in there. It’s our subtle attempt at a murder ballad.”
Strange Weather
Jez: “This was two separate songs until we realised there was a connection between them. There was about 20 different iterations of it until we nailed it. It was an enjoyable nut to crack but it wasn’t easy. The first bit is very spacious and conjures up lots of visual images, I think, then we completely flip it on its head, and it does a complete U-turn for this mad bit at the end. We played it all the way through live, which is the key. You can’t hear the join because there isn’t one!”
“It’s unpredictable. I like to be one step ahead and try to divert where you think you’re going to go or go the other way. I get a kick out of that. It starts off very filmic, and then it turns into a post-punk workout, if you want to put a label on it.” While Jez wrote the verses, Andy supplied the lyrics to the final section, which originally belonged to a different song. “And weirdly, they fit together. The lyrics are non-specific but create an atmosphere.” Jez agrees, adding that they give the song an “apocalyptic” feeling, which comes from the unusual way in which they were written. “Every time I had an idea for a song title, I wrote it down. And then I realized I could actually piece all those song titles together, kind of how Bowie used to cut and paste lyrics. It started to give this really odd picture, almost like little snapshots of different situations through life. It’s something that we hadn’t done before, so it was a nice territory for us to have a wander around.”
A Drop in the Ocean
Jez: “I brought in that song. It was written in a completely different style, and we did a 180 on it. It was really fast originally, and we did it in half time. It was really important to bring out the soul of the track. If you listen to the production, it’s got that contemporary soul sound to it, that dark soul vibe that we were going for. We had the chorus, and Jimi came in and absolutely nailed the verses.”
Andy: It’s a song about us being insignificant, which can be helpful to remember when you’re going through a tough time. “A problem can be so big in your head, but it can be comforting to remember how small we are in the grand scheme of things.”
Last Year’s Man
Andy: “I really like this song. It feels quite old time-y to me, it’s got a bit of a Celtic thing going on. My kids are 17 and 14 and, lyrically, it touches upon those feelings of not wanting them to grow up, wanting to keep them the same but everything always keeps changing.”
“Last Year’s Man” is about “hoping that you did the best job that you possibly could as a father. You get to that sweet spot in your relationship when they aren’t quite teenagers, they are really sweet and you want them to stay that way. It’s about not wanting people to change, but you can’t hold people you love back”.
Stupid Schemes
Jimi: “Stupid Schemes’ got a Curtis Mayfield or Isley Brothers vibe. I originally jammed it out in Gothenburg with members of Dungen, so the idea has been around for a while, but they say it took Leonard Cohen 25 years to write ‘Tower Of Song’. It gives me great comfort that it’s found a home. It’s about being a little wary of everything, to trust yourself, to ‘hang on to your oddity’. Trust you, not what someone else tells you.”
Andy: “Jimi brought this one to the table. The album really needs it at that point. It was perfect. When me and Jez both heard it, it sounded a bit different for us with that psychedelic lead guitar, we don’t normally do that. It’s got this really bright, optimistic feeling to it which is perfect for the record. It’s a break from the intensity.”
Saint Teresa
Andy: “Saint Teresa was originally going to go on The Universal Want but we thought it would make it a bit overlong. We’ve never been interested in making an album with 20 songs on it that goes on for an hour and a half. It felt right for this one, though. All three of us are lapsed Catholics, so Saint Teresa figures in that. Jimi wrote the verses and I wrote the choruses. Again, Jimi delivers a great vocal here.”
Jimi: “By keeping it to one side, we were able to reappraise it and make it better. Andy and Jez helped out with it and it’s great that it’s found a home.“My Catholicism went out of the window years ago, but I love the iconography associated with the church. They put on a really good show. I identify with it all from my childhood. The story of Saint Teresa is fascinating“
Jez: “Sometimes songs can be like a Rubik’s Cube. You play with it but have to go back to it after a time and, only then, do you really know what to do with it. ‘Saint Teresa’ was still knocking on the door when we came to record the album, so we took it into sessions with Dan Austin, replacing some of it, changing a few of the lyrics and it turned out great.”
Orlando
Andy: “Orlando was one of Jimi’s. He brought it in, and we put it through the filter. I really like his vocal on that. It doesn’t directly reference anything, but I feel it’s got a feel of some of the things that he’s been through himself – there’s metaphors in there. I’ve never asked him about the lyrics on this one but to me it feels like his statement about what he’s been through.”
Jimi had written “Orlando” several years earlier, but it was remodelled for Constellations for the Lonely. “We stripped away quite a lot of the instrumentation for that,”
“It was a lot fuller. We realized that little piano motif and the vocal were the really strong bits of the song. There was a lot more samples in there and we just stripped it all out, really.” The other innovation was what Jez describes as “switching the palette” between sections – “The verses, we wanted to have that feel where it was impromptu around the piano. And then it goes into this massive soundscape of Balearic stabs, and it’s almost like the opposite of the verse” – while Jimi’s lyrics added to the eccentricity. “He took the car into the garage, and they put the wrong set of brakes on – it’s quite an unusual lyric motif to put in a song! But for me, it gave it a weird, untethered feeling. It almost sounds a bit like Travis in Paris, Texas, when he’s walking through the desert.”
Southern Bell
Andy: We love the film ‘Butch Cassidy (and the Sundance Kid)’: ‘Me and you against the world, going out in a blaze of glory.’ It’s just trying to make songs paint pictures, really. I guess it’s as far removed from our day to day lives.”
“That really came together – for me – when Jez sings the first half and Jimi takes over halfway through. I really liked the dynamic of that. It changed the story, although the lyrics were the same. It added more gravitas to the lyrics, I think. It felt very much like a final song on the record.”
We’ve read that Southern Bell sounded a bit like Queen, who have never been a reference for us…”
Jez: “I told you at the time! It’s those bloody backing vocals. We actually stripped it down, it was way more Queen before, there was like 60 backing vocals on it! We wanted to do a big spaghetti western thing. I sing the first bit and then Jimi comes in and does the second bit. I really wanted to try that because the story’s about two people running out of time, running out of luck, but they’re going to go out in a blaze of glory. It’s almost like a conversation between the two of them. It worked brilliantly. Immediately, I was like, ‘That’s got to be the last song on the record! “We knew when we did ‘Renegade’, that was the first track on the record, and we knew when we finished ‘Southern Bell’ that that’s how we were going to go out.”
Lean into the Wind
Jimi: “It’s all there in the lyrics, it’s about addiction, It’s drawn from a situation I was in at the time and, although I am inspired more by making songs about characters, this literally happened to me. Going to someone’s house, trying something and it consuming you within days. I am not ashamed of it; it’s a story of what can happen and it’s not uncommon. It happens to people every day, hopefully it’s a cautionary tale.”
Andy: “Jimi took the song away and came back with the first verse. There was just instant recognition that it was about some of the stuff he must have been going through. Ultimately, it had real authenticity to it, just like everything he does. In writing the second verse, all I could do was imagine what he’d been through and what he’d been feeling. Hopefully it’s a song that resonates.”
Cally
Jimi: “It’s about seemingly, permanently shambling people, those who just never seem to get anywhere and they deserve so much better. A story of lovely ne’er-do-wells who always seem to grab the wrong end of a dirty stick.”
Andy: “Jimi and I both play drums on this one, so when you hear any fancy rolls… that’s him! We recorded it at Eve Studios and it was initially a bit overshadowed by other songs we were working on at the time. As with many Doves songs, we needed to just do a bit of patient chopping to actually get to the song, but we got there.”
Cally reached #17 on the UK singles chart in April 2025. Doves highest-charting single since Snowden reached #17 in May 2005!
Thoughts on the album
Jez: “I’d say it is a darker album. We never, ever have a plan when we set out to write an album. We just let it happen naturally. You have to, I think. I don’t like contrivances like that, with a blackboard: ‘Right, we’re going to make this move and that move.’ It never pans out.”
“A lot of those lyrics deal with anxiety or how to overcome the anxiety. In all honesty, there was a lot of anxiety around. Writing the album was actually our…safe space against what was happening outside of that place. I think the album is holding up a mirror – I can probably speak for Andy as well – to what was going on.”
Andy: “There was a lot of stuff going on outside the studio, I guess. As Jez says, in the studio was our escape, really. That went well, but it was all the stuff around outside that was challenging. I guess that is going to seep into the music.
We get bored quite easily so we like to keep things interesting for ourselves, really. Keep stuff that we find challenging. Maybe not to the listener, but to us, to keep us engaged. ‘Cold Dreaming’ and ‘Last Year’s Man’ felt like new areas for us. When we were writing them, it felt new to us, which is all you can go off, really. When you’ve been in the band as long as we have, you do have to keep it interesting and keep progressing.”
Jez: “I always like to think of the sonics as the fourth instrument. You might have the guitar, bass etc but I always thought there’s always room – and there always should be room – for sonics, because I like the abstractness of it. I think it helps create tension and release in the music. Perhaps we’ve taken that from our past band, Sub Sub. There used to be a lot of sonics in dance music.
But we took a bit of that knowledge with us and we never let that side go. That all stemmed from the sampling culture and using things from outside what you create when you’re playing instruments. I think that aspect is really important to the Doves sound. I think it’s what separates us from other bands; we’re kind of obsessed with getting these sonics simmering in there. We’re always keen to get that element in.”
Jimi: “We’ve made yet another, I think, solid and great Doves album, Constellations For The Lonely.”
How involved were you in it? Jimi:“I was present when I was present, and I was a bit absent without leave when I was absent without leave. But somehow we got it made, like we always do. I’m thrilled with my contribution to it. I joined in when I felt able. I get three or four songs which are pretty much mine on there. We tend to finish each other’s songs, that’s what being a band’s about. That’s the way our collaboration works anyway: someone brings something in, and hopefully the three of us make it better together.”
Andy: “For instance, on this album there’s a song called Stupid Schemes, which is pretty much all Jimi. Then you’ve got a situation like Renegade, where it was my chords, my vocals, but I hit a bit of a brick wall on it. I played it for Jez and he went, ‘Right, I’ve got an idea for this.’ We took it to the rehearsal room and Jimi already had the idea, the theme for the song. We were trying to go for a Scott Walker vibe, all three of us love Scott Walker. I can’t remember who suggested Piccadilly Circus, but Jimi said, ‘How about Piccadilly Gardens?’ Piccadilly Gardens is central in Manchester, and that, again, shifted the lyrics a bit.”
What’s next for Doves
A new Best of celebrating 25 years of Doves will be released in November 2025. For those wondering why a new Best of, considering the label released a Best of in 2010, and it’s a valid question. The original ‘The Places Between’ released in 2010 was not released on vinyl. Rather than reissuing that compilation on vinyl, it would be amiss to release a Best of in 2025 without the likes of Carousels, Renegade & Lean into The Wind etc
Beyond, the live band continues on with it’s current line-up sans, Jimi Goodwin. The band will play a few bigger UK shows in December. There is hope the band may be able to take the live show outside of the UK provided there is promoter interest. The band were asked about their future earlier this year:
Jimi: “We’ve always been notoriously slow, but we’ve been sat on this album for a year, For us, that’s ridiculous. To be sitting on material that was signed off and in the can over a year ago and to only have it coming out next year is a massive achievement for Doves. With ‘The Universal Want’, we came back after that break with renewed passion for each other and feeling blessed that the chemistry was still there.”
I’ve got tracks already earmarked, and knowing Andy and Jez they’d have already started making songs too. We’re a going concern again, but we’re just very fortunate that we can take breaks. I’ve been getting paid as a musician since I was 17, and I was a very fucking lucky young man. I’m not trying to be faux humble, but to get a living out of this game means a lot.”
On the talk of soundtrack/instrumental music (not for the first time) Andy: We once had a day where we were in the studio, and Martin Rebelski, who plays live with us, brought down his modular synths. I said we don’t ever jam, but we had a day of jamming, just for the hell of it.
“It was quite filmic what we did, listening back. It was very sprawling. Hours of it, us mucking around. It was all instrumental and we thought, ‘Wouldn’t that be really good fun to try and do that with some images?
Jez: At the moment, we’re doing the more zen approach, just to preserve our own heads, as well. It has to be like that. Take each day as it comes.
Credit: Article put together using interviews from Doves social media, Clash Music, Dek Magazine, NME, Song Writing magazine, Far Out magazine, The New Que.