album

April 19, 2009

Review Round-Up #13

A few more reviews which have filtered through during the past week (mostly from U.S. College newsletters)…

The Doves’ newest album, Kingdom of Rust, is definitely not for everyone. It is a cacophony of minor, at times difficult-on-the-ear sounds. That being said, it is likely to be one of the most intriguing, original albums you’ve heard in a long time. The entire album has a strange, almost electronica-like aura, perhaps most notably displayed in the track, “The Outsiders.” It is a little creepy at times, but in general makes for an overarching sound that is both indie and at times reminiscent of classic rock. “House of Mirrors” is probably the most interesting track of the album, constantly changing the prevalent rhythm and tempo while spontaneously adding sound effects and featuring incredible guitar instrumentals. The listener will never get bored, but may, on the contrary, wish for a break, one that comes around the middle of the album. The listener is given room to digest the initial fast-paced music with much slower-paced tracks, beginning with “10:03.” “Ship of Fools” is another track worthy of mention, as its background flow somehow emits the feeling of being on a ship at sea. The Doves have changed since their most widely known album, 2002’s The Last Broadcast, but an open-minded listener will bask in the innovative glory of Kingdom of Rust.

Student Life, Album Review:

The band musters a lot of sound for just three guys, carefully layered and interestingly developed, rather than relying on repetitive chords and lines. Of particular note is guitarist Jez Williams, who manages varied effects, from wah-wahs to heavy distortion dripping with resonance to heavy incisive licks, sometimes even within the same song, while making them all seem not only to fit, but also to be absolutely necessary.

To read the full review, click here.

The John Hopkins News-Letter, Album Review:

Doves bring their most ambitious and bold material out towards the end of Kingdom of Rust. Before guitarist Jez Williams begins singing on “Compulsion,” the sound can be confused with that of another Mancunian threesome, the Bee Gees. With Andy Williams tapping away on the top hat and cymbals and Goodwin laying down a groovy baseline, this song just makes you want to dance like its 1975.

To read the full review, click here.

The Huddersfield Daily Examiner, Album Review:

This has been 18 months in the making and they’ve secreted themselves away in a Cheshire farmhouse to record it. The fruits of their extended labour is an album that’s cerebral and eclectic –experimental even. At times they’re wind-up merchants, building up a fever-pitch sense of anticipation without ever flourishing into the longed-for killer chorus. Others range from a Chemical Brothers-kind wallop through to Who-like meandering rock anthems –and that’s before the quiet, orchestral rock intensity and far-off shimmerings. As for where the Lancastrian Spaghetti western-sounding title track fits in –well, it doesn’t.

April 13, 2009

Kingdom Of Rust Album #2 In U.K. Charts

Doves’ Kingdom Of Rust album entered the official U.K. album chart at #2 yesterday, beaten only by (the tabloid-friendly) Lady Gaga’s The Fame.

To view the full U.K. album chart, click here.

April 7, 2009

Jez Writes About The Last Broadcast At Q The Music.com

Continuing Doves’ guest editorship of Q The Music.com, Jez has reminisced about the making of The Last Broadcast album.

Caught By The River happened so quickly it was ridiculous. We decided to go to a rehearsal room in Stockport called The Green Room. Jimi, Andy and I just started to play these three chords. Jimi started to sing this great top line melody and there it was… very natural and easy. Andy started to write these very poignant lyrics about a friend of ours; everything started to click like at the start of the recording. That was the last piece of the jigsaw for the album.

To read the full essay, visit the site, here.

April 7, 2009

Doves On Track For U.K. #1 Album

Music Week reports that the album sold a staggering 18,500 copies on its first day of release, yesterday.

Doves flying high in sales reports

Doves look set to score another number one album this Sunday, with their new set Kingdom Of Rust (Heavenly) leading a wealth of new entries to the chart.

The Heavenly album sold around 18,500 units on its day of release yesterday, comfortably outselling nearest competitor Lady GaGa’s The Fame (Polydor), which topped the charts last week.

To read the full article, click here.

April 6, 2009

Review Round-Up #8

A few more reviews…

Associated Press (via Macleans.ca), Album Review:

Doves’ 4th album, ‘Kingdom of Rust,’ good but not good enough

The British trio Doves spent nearly two years crafting a follow-up to its stellar 2005 album, “Some Cities.” Sadly, “Kingdom of Rust” comes up short.

That’s not to say it isn’t good. It just doesn’t match the punchy vibe of “Some Cities” and, at times, may actually be a bit boring.

Jimi Goodwin, Jez Williams and Andy Williams, who first started playing together as teenagers in Cheshire, England, aimed to stretch their musical muscles on “Rust.” And on many tracks, they succeed. The album opener, “Jetstream,” is an electro-tinged, Kraftwerk-inspired song. “The Outsider” mixes classic rock rhythms with electronic sounds. And the album’s best track, its title song, is a rhythmic romp blending bright guitars with a galloping, cowboy-style bassline.

But other tracks simply fail to excite. With its fat, driving bass, “Compulsion” shows promise but ends up being an 1980s electropop throwback. Similarly, anthemic songs such as “Winter Hill” and “Greatest Denier” are good enough, but ultimately forgettable. The love song “Spellbound” and the ethereal “Birds Flew Backwards” are musically lovely, but don’t cry out for a repeat play.

Where “Some Cities” beckoned the ears with each track, “Rust” fades into the background. Too bad the albums weren’t released in reverse.

Check out this track: Arranged by Tom Rowlands of the Chemical Brothers, “10:03” starts slow and builds into a layered, bass-heavy rocker with driving rhythms.

Rolling Stone, Album Review:

For their fourth record in nine years, Doves deliver gorgeous, sonically adventurous tunes dappled with strings, droning guitars, Radiohead-ish atmospherics and singer Jimi Goodwin’s longing tales of lonely train rides and missing the sunshine. Kingdom of Rust is wonderfully dolorous, but when Doves rev up the tempos on tracks like “The Outsiders,” they show they’re not a total pity party. Their good cheer isn’t always convincing: “Compulsion” sounds like a bad cover of Blondie’s “Rapture.” But they get bonus points for re-creating the keyboard sound from Steve Miller’s “Fly Like an Eagle” on “Jetstream.”

Daily Mirror (via Mirror.co.uk), Album Review:

Kingdom Of Rust, 4/5

It has been four years since Doves released an album and while they’ve been away, fellow Mancs Elbow have muscled in on their brand of uplifting melancholy.

But Kingdom Of Rust recaptures and significantly extends the band’s gameplan.

The gloomy but heartfelt title track establishes the record’s mood and musical edge, while the songs that surround it confirm that Doves have not been lying idly by or resting on their laurels.

The bristling and urgent 10:03 strengthens their grip on widescreen rock with a train ride into the murky recesses of the soul, while Birds Flew Backwards unfurls its forlorn, string-laden sorrow with style and substance to spare.

There’s clamour and spooky sound effects woven into the furious hard rock of House Of Mirrors.

Psychedelia from the dark side of town, it’s a song where doubt and dissolving identity are common bedfellows.

Kingdom Of Rust maps out foreboding and fearsome territory, but even in the album’s most punishing moments (Lifelines) the trio find a way to fly free.

April 6, 2009

Andy Writes About Lost Souls At Q The Music.com

Doves’ guest editorship of Q The Music.com this week, continues apace. Today’s Doves feature is Andy’s recollections of creating the Lost Souls album.

…By this time the studio fire had happened in our first studio in Ancoats, Manchester and as we were signed to Rob Gretton’s label he suggested renting New Order’s Cheetham Hill studio off them. This was where the bulk of the album was recorded. We really did lock ourselves away for 3 to 4 years until we discovered how we wanted to sound, it was a pretty oppressive place with no windows and thieves trying to break in!

To read more, visit the site, here.

April 6, 2009

Review Round-Up #7

More reviews of Doves’ Kingdom Of Rust album.

Popmatters, Album Review:

While the consistent Some Cities cruised along comfortably, Kingdom of Rust is a bumpier ride, as we hear Doves playing to their strengths one minute, and giving in to their schmaltzy instincts the next. However, for a good half hour we’re hearing what sounds like a rejuvenated band, the three musicians up to their old eclectic mischief, sounding as ambitious as ever. “Jetstream” is inspired, the band’s dance element returning with a vengeance, thrumming synths, pounding kick drum, and flange-enhanced hi-hat beats backing Jez’s coy, detached vocals, and the furious “The Outsiders” rocks harder than the threesome ever has before, the song’s churning, swaggering hard rock at times evoking Swervedriver’s “Last Train to Satansville”. With its wistful mellotron loops, ambient touches, and the simple phrasing by smooth-voiced Goodwin, “Winter Hill” captures a pastoral feeling far better than the last album, while the shifts from rich layers of trilling melodies to the abrupt, tense bassline of the chorus on “The Greatest Denier” is an inspired touch.

To read the full review, click here.

Metro.co.uk, Album Review:

Doves are still shaking a tail feather

Doves must be getting sick of the comparison by now but it’s hard not to wonder if the recent success enjoyed by Elbow could also happen to them.

After all, they’re both scruffy but charming gangs from the North-west who write impassioned, anthemic songs deeply connected to the region and who have been plodding along reliably in the background throughout the last decade.

So is Kingdom Of Rust their Seldom Seen Kid? In some ways, it could be.

What has always made Doves so appealing –the rhythmic undercurrents that betrayed their early days as dance act Sub Sub, the multi-textured songs which slowly reveal themselves –is confidently displayed here on songs such as the searing opener Jetstream or the dizzying Winter Hill.

There are also successful moves outside the band’s comfort zone, such as the throbbing, motorik rhythm that powers The Outsiders or the title track, a shuffling, achingly sad song which paints Lancashire as the dusty setting for a spaghetti western.

However, Kingdom Of Rust doesn’t maintain this early quality, flagging in the centre and exposing the craggier edges of singer Jimi Goodwin’s vocals.

With a cluster of formulaic tracks forming the album’s core, only the surprisingly funky Compulsion and the more forceful House Of Mirrors lift the record again towards its close.

A complex, multi-faceted record, Kingdom Of Rust will certainly appeal to Doves’ existing fans but it lacks the sheer force of personality needed to make everyone else sit up and take note again.

Yorkshire Evening Post, Album Review:

Doves’ epic indie rock mightn’t fall under what we class as “urban” and “industrial” music, but there’s arguably no-one more suited to that description. Their sound conjures up huge rain-lashed cooling towers, crumbling apartment blocks huddled under cumulonimbus-clogged skies, weed-cracked concrete and traffic-clogged sliproads. In these imposing landscapes stand the glum-faced Doves, the beating human heart of these soulless spaces.

Highlights are the Morricone-flavoured title track with its unexpected, uplifting Mike Oldfield-esque melody, the atmospheric Jetstream with its driving Kraftwerkian beats and spacy electronic flourishes, the waking dream of 10:03, and the rousing Compulsion, which mixes a funky bassline with vast sweeps of atmospheric guitar to great effect.

As ever, there’s something highly satisfying and strangely comforting about their sullen pomp, guaranteed to put some drama into a dreary drive over the M62.

Rating 4/5

Cutting Edge, Album Review:

‘Jetstream’ is de knaller die ‘Kingdom of rust’ opent. De groep beweert zelf dat het nummer gestoeld is op hun voorliefde voor Vangelis (!). Wij horen enkel de binnenrollende drums zoals wij dat enkel Larry Mullen jr hebben weten doen, in goede doen. De groep boet hier misschien wat in aan melodie, maar pompt zo de wilskracht naar het voorste plan. Ook verder in het album zijn het de drums en de baslijnen die voor de hoogste noot zorgen. Nummers als ‘The outsiders’ en ‘The great denier’ zorgen voor een dynamisch tempo.

To read the full review, click here.

April 5, 2009

Review Round-Up #5

More reviews of the album and single are still filtering through – and with the odd exceptions, they’re overwhelmingly positive…

Scotland On Sunday (via Scotsman.com), Album Review:

Thrillingly propelled by Jimi Goodwin’s turbine engine of a bass guitar, the three cool Cheshire cats float above the industrial grime of the English north-east sprinkling a little glamour on their customary grit. ‘House Of Mirrors’ dazzles with a driving beat decorated by spaghetti western instrumental flourishes, and a chorus that will lift the roof off arenas.

“North-East”?… :o)

To read the full review, click here.

Halesowen News, Single Review:

Doves – Kingdom Of Rust: To soften the blow of leaving us in the lurch for four years, Doves have done the decent thing and returned with an absolute stormer. We’ve heard the album, and this isn’t even the best song on it.

The Independent On Sunday, Album Review:

Doves –the band with added moisturiser –are looking to “do an Elbow” this year. In other words, a middle-ranking, fondly regarded but fundamentally unsexy band making an unexpected late-career leap into the big time.

But Jimi Goodwin is no Guy Garvey, vocally or lyrically, and if Kingdom of Rust –which alternates between freewheeling country rock and portentous indie prog –is the record that does it, that’s purely down to timing. (The Last Broadcast was a worthier candidate.)

Download this: ‘Compulsion’: OCD, as easy as 1-2-3

The Sunday Times (via Times Online.co.uk), Album Review:

Four years on from their most recent album, Some Cities, the Manchester trio return. Everything you expect from a Doves record is here; and that, in a sense, is the problem. Of signs of development and advance, there are frustratingly few. The sonic subtlety that has always vied for supremacy with the band’s big-picture, prog-like tendencies is present and correct: sections of tracks such as Jetstream, 10.03 and Birds Flew Backwards contain huge open spaces in which tiny interjections make a mighty impact. Compulsion, meanwhile, nods to both Blondie’s Rapture and the band’s own dance roots. More typical of a strangely moribund album, however, are Winter Hill and The Greatest Denier, where their defaults of heavy sound blankets and rhythmic doggedness begin to seem not only oppressive, but dull.

April 4, 2009

Review Round-Up #3

More reviews of both the single and album, which you may have missed over the last few days…

Sunday Mercury.net, Album Review:

WITH three equally impressive, idiosyncratic albums to their name already, the right fourth album could assure Doves’ rightful place as one of our most consistently exciting bands. Kingdom Of Rust explores a layered, adventurous terrain, with nods to Kraftwerk and funk in various places, thanks to Jimi Goodwin’s unique howl and a Sub Sub-esque groove. Opener Jetstream and the title track will be known to fans already, but it’s perhaps Winter Hill, 10.03, arranged by Chemical Brother Tom Rowlands and anthemic closer Lifelines that typify Kingdom Of Rust best, bustling with ambition.

Music Week (via California Chronicle.com), Single Review:

For a band who concentrate their attentions so much on texture and atmosphere, Doves have a canny knack of delivering a killer pop song to kick-start an album’s campaign. As with previous singles There Goes The Fear and Black And White Town, Kingdom Of Rust sounds like nothing else at the moment; a soft-focus jangly gem seemingly plucked from a Morricone-scored Western. Radio loves the track, with BBC, Absolute and Xfm stations showing support. Meanwhile, the band are midway through an extensive campaign of airplay sessions and are attracting interest from Channel Four, E4, Sky and a wealth of national press.

Daily Record, Single Review:

Doves – Kingdom Of Rust *** It’s been four years since Doves had their biggest hit Black And White Town. Since then, fellow northern English sadsacks Elbow have achieved crossover success. Let’s hope this jaunty Chris Rea-sounding upbeat tune helps the trio.

April 4, 2009

Review Round-Up #2

Here’s several more reviews of the album, which you may have missed over the last few days…

Kansas City.com, Album Review:

Doves | ‘Kingdom of Rust’: Rust is the first release in four years from the British trio of brothers Andy and Jez Williams and Jimi Goodwin. The trio continued its work with producer Dan Austin. Sounds like: Coldplay, with more unexpected turns and bigger risks.

San Francisco Chronicle (via SFGate.com), Album Review:

The punk-funk oddity “Compulsion,” a lovingly crafted early New Order tribute, is a delight, though, even if it feels like iTunes has unintentionally slipped into shuffle mode.

To read the full review, click here.

St. Petersburg Times (via Tampa Bay.com), Album Review:

…the buzzing, strobing Jetstream, a dreamlike synth-pounder about “carbon seas, cast adrift on a trouble dream.” Yeah, I have NO idea. But it’s a sublime head-spinner for both humans and replicants, and it sucks you in like a vacuum, refusing to let go.

To read the full review, click here.

The Times (via TimesOnline.com), Album Review:

Doves: Kingdom of Rust. If there’s any such thing as an Elbow bounce, Guy Garvey’s fellow Mancunians have timed their fourth album smartly. Refraining from fixing what wasn’t broken, the best moments of their return evoke the magic hour industrial sunsets of their hometown, while detours into Morricone-inspired territory and the four-to-the-floor fireworks of House of Mirrors supply peaks to please those familiar with its predecessors.