Alexis Petridis

U.K. newspaper, The Guardian, tomorrow publishes its review of the Doves’ Kingdom Of Rust album, but the review is already available online today…

It’s a curious state of affairs – No 1 artists who still carry an underdog aura – but it means that Kingdom of Rust sounds not like a band comfortably consolidating their previous success, but something more exciting: a band unexpectedly, subtly but unequivocally shifting up a gear.

You could argue that Kingdom of Rust is not vastly different from previous Doves albums. Folky guitar figures ground their airier musical conceits; the thud and rush of the dancefloor never seems far away; the more euphoric the music gets; the more miserable everyone in the songs becomes. “Home feels like a place I’ve never been,” protests Goodwin as a preposterously uplifting psychedelic soul stomp called House of Mirrors achieves vertical takeoff.

Click here to read the full review.