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Snowden
(Explicit, Radio Single)
2005
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Doves
Doves - Biography (2002)
"Every song's got to be a killer. There isn't any point otherwise. Who needs another average song in their lives?" Jez Williams, January 2001. When Doves stepped back into the studio at the start of 2001, they knew exactly what they wanted to achieve. It was time to rip up the past, move on and become the band they'd always wanted to be.
Their debut album Lost Souls released 12 months earlier might have exceeded expectations both critically and commercially (it sold 160,000 copies in the UK and was dubbed "the first great album of the millennium" by NME), but it brought with it its own baggage. Namely, no one really got to the heart of what Doves (that's Jimi Goodwin - their notional frontman - and the twins Jez and Andy Williams) were all about.
Musically, they were talked about in terms of "The Big Music" - an oblique reference to the '80s stadium histrionics of U2, Echo And The Bunnymen and Simple Minds. This was perplexing to a band who'd grown up with The Smiths and New Order before gravitating towards Manchester's notorious club The Hacienda and house music.
Emotionally, too, they found themselves misrepresented, painted as classic northern miserabilists. True, the record had had its gestation in hard times (their studio burning down in 1996, the collapse of their first band Sub Sub in 1997, and their friend and mentor Rob Gretton dying in 1999), but Lost Souls wasn't an LP about defeat. Rather, it was about the opposite.
"People were always telling us we were downbeat," explains Jez, "but Lost Souls isn't like that at all. It's all about fighting and getting out of your situation. It's got so much hope to it. I think we had the same problem that The Smiths had. People tagged them as miserable, but they needed to look deeper. There was so much joy there. The music was just northern soul." "When we went back into the studio this time," expands Jimi, "we were determined to get rid of that perception people had of us. I mean, it's dead easy to write melancholy songs. To write positive stuff is a really tall order." "This time round," adds Jez, "we also had more confidence and I think you can really hear that." This time, then, there was to be no mistake and - importantly - there was to be far less pain. Lost Souls had eaten up four years of their lives, four years spent in a windowless room in Cheetham Hill that used to be New Order's studio. The Last Broadcast, however, took just 12 months. 10, if you deduct the two months they spent touring in America.
As Andy points out: "For us, making a record in a year is some sort of miracle. It used to take us that long to do one song!"
Confidence, though, was the key. Rather than going slowly insane in one claustrophobic room, they travelled around. They recorded at Revolution in Manchester and Parr Street in Liverpool, when they got fed up with that they rented cottages in Ramsbottom and Cumbria. One track's vocals (the beautiful 'M62') were recorded by Andy under a flyover in Northenden just outside Manchester. Two tracks were recorded at Real World studios in Bath, before finally ending up in London at The Dairy and 2kHz studios respectively. If this sounds like an odyssey, it's meant to. It's what the record sounds like.
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Self-produced (apart from some additional production by Max Heyes and on "Satellites", produced by Steve Osbourne, and augmented by some wonderful string arrangements by The High Llama's Sean O'Hagan, whilst "Caught By The River" was co- produced by both Doves and Osbourne), the result of these disparate sessions is nothing short of sensational.
Andy recently declared that the album was like "northern soul meets New Order meets The White Stripes". That, though, is only the half of it. It feels like when Radiohead went from 'Pablo Honey' to 'The Bends', or even from 'The Bends' to 'OK Computer'. It's a quantum leap, and one that compresses all their influences and experiences into one magnificent document. The Smiths, The Hacienda, My Bloody Valentine, it's all there, and it sounds incredible. From the chiming psychedelia of "Words" through to the expansiveness of "There Goes The Fear" and the relentless assault of "Pounding" , there's a sense of adventure that Lost Souls only hinted at.
Throw in the cinematic rush of tracks like "Friday's Dust" and "Sulphur Man" and the soulful punch of a song like "Satellite" and you can begin to sense the ambition. There's just so much to it: electronic flourishes, found sounds, house beats played by a rock band, layers of dense noise, unexpected experimentation, trance-like repetition, acoustic folk, you name it, it's on there. It's like an album produced by Martin Hannett, The Chemical Brothers and Phil Spector all at the same time. "We're so proud of it," admits Jimi, "but we're still too close to it to make any claims."
"It's certainly the most optimistic thing we've ever written," expands Jez. Andy: "I'm just happy we captured the diversity of what we can do. I think the record's a real journey." "I think we've exorcised a few ghosts," concludes Jez. "Even going back to Sub Sub, we've never quite made the right record or managed to fit in with what's going on. This time, though, I think we've finally established an identity of our own. I think you can finally hear what Doves are really all about."
He's right. Doves have dispensed with past and become the band that they always wanted to be. Just listen to The Last Broadcast. It's the second great album of the millennium.