Doves

about the artist
"God knows it ain't easy, but I can't live my days in fear… "
Inspiration is seldom elusive and motivation rarely fades for Doves as the boundary-clearing alchemists of yearning, scenic alternative sound return with their sixth studio album, 25 years after they arrived with their Mercury Award-nominated debut. Tested yet undiminished, the three members' artistic impulses quietly raged on following 2020's third No.1 album success of The Universal Want, getting to work almost immediately afterwards. Five years on, a baton passes to Constellations For The Lonely, ten new tracks of enkindled, future-facing, meticulous manipulation of mood.
Such is the…
More"God knows it ain't easy, but I can't live my days in fear… "
Inspiration is seldom elusive and motivation rarely fades for Doves as the boundary-clearing alchemists of yearning, scenic alternative sound return with their sixth studio album, 25 years after they arrived with their Mercury Award-nominated debut. Tested yet undiminished, the three members' artistic impulses quietly raged on following 2020's third No.1 album success of The Universal Want, getting to work almost immediately afterwards. Five years on, a baton passes to Constellations For The Lonely, ten new tracks of enkindled, future-facing, meticulous manipulation of mood.
Such is the obvious sense of accomplishment, if not individually-draining perfectionism, heard on Constellations Of The Lonely, it's barely conceivable to the listener that the Doves' story, an eternally misted window looking into understated drama and suspense, had come to a crackling, static halt. A picture paused on a tantalising cliff-hanger. Doves took the difficult decision to remove themselves from public view in late-2021 due to the, now well-publicised, health and well-being concerns for frontman, Jimi Goodwin.
Could this be the end?
The end didn't arrive for Doves, just as never seems to arrive. Those were actually hurdles, just disguised as roadblocks. For the trio to go beyond survival, floating miraculously onwards to hitting another high watermark of artistic accomplishment, some things had to stay the same and others had to change. But, as they always seemed to, they got there… somehow.
"It's been a Godsend, working remotely," explains Goodwin, when asked about new necessities to cope with a process of personal recovery and coming to the table to record. "It really suited the dynamic. From back when we were Sub Sub, we went into the studio every day, morning to evening, religiously, even if it was shit. When it goes right, there's no better feeling, but we don't have to traipse down to the same building day after day to get that anymore. Listening to this album again just recently, it sounds fabulous."
Truth can seep into fiction, yet Constellations Of The Lonely is generally spoken about by the band as narrators, largely outsiders to its bruising, brilliant tale. Opening with Renegade, where a cataclysmic, distorted single note clears a path for another classic Doves single, much of their talk is about shattered images of a world in flux. Andy Williams, drummer, vocalist and co-songwriter, says: "We wanted to go for a dystopian feel, thinking about Manchester itself over the next century or so. A totally imaginary thing… 'Blade Runner' set in our home city." Yet, he and the band's guitarist, vocalist and co-songwriter, Jez Williams admit the songs prescience, the latter agreeing: "There was a lot of personal stuff going on at the time, but it's taking on a different meaning now. It's poignant, today there's a lot of shit going on in the world generally."
Blade Runner is just one of the films that played in the Williams brothers' heads in weaving the track together, with Goodwin arriving to help with lyrics ("Piccadilly Gardens, selling dreams on giant screens") as they sat down determinedly to write The Universal Want's follow-up in their famed Frank Bough Sound III studio. A home they were forced to leave soon after, demolishing a bridge to their mutual past, affecting a forced stop and promoting new layers of ingenuity in getting the album made. They weren't always alone. Sessions in studios in Greater Manchester, once in the company of a specially-assembled string section from players at the Royal Northern College of Music, Yorkshire and North Wales, kept the band from stifling isolation.
Cameras rolled and, on penultimate, track, Orlando, all three band members respond unprompted to quote Wim Wenders's tense 1984 drama, Paris, Texas, as an influence. It's the film's poised drama, evocative of the images in their mind's eye, that resonates when they hear it again. Above the fracture, sparseness and ambience of the ethereal composition, Goodwin's vocal is isolated and defiant. "It's about a guy on the edge of town, contemplating walking back into and becoming part of society again," he says. "I've felt that way myself. That wouldn't have occurred to me when I was writing it, but there has to be a personal part of what you write, otherwise it wouldn't be authentic. Essentially, it's about waiting to get back to the good bits of who you once were."
It could be that Doves have got back to the best bits of who they are, collectively, on second track, Cold Dreaming, as an inspired, potentially album-defining signature synth line explodes into a nebular of intricately woven guitar lines, strings and percussion. With Jez and Andy fronting on vocals, an open secret lives within the signature riff itself (Jez: "It's actually manifested in different Doves songs. If you listen to 'Jetstream' carefully… ."). Musically, Doves referenced recurrent passions in the psychedelic blues of Charles Stepney and the experimental funk/soul of David Axelrod, meshing with lyrics that swirled around in the harshly-lit present.
Andy says: "For me, '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. It hasn't been the easiest record to make, having to leave our studio in Hatton (Cheshire) was a kick in the nuts, but we really did get the wind in our sails at times."
The propulsion to repay their faith in Doves came in waves of their long-standing, now innate, learned sense of collaboration. In unison, referring to it as 'the Doves filter' ("Any one of us could be away. If I disappeared for a bit, Andy and Jimi could work a Doves track and I'd come back and not have to do much." — Jez). As fourth track, A Drop In The Ocean, opens with glassy guitar lines muted behind an ostentatious, trebly bass leading line, it falls to the listener — including each band member — that the return of The Cure arrived just before Doves could 'do' The Cure in Robert Smith's absence. That curious, wholly welcome collision of esteemed British musical institutions aside, the song exemplifies the Doves filter as two members started a sentence before purposely leaving another to finish it.
"The song opened completely differently, as I first had it," says Jez. "It was really rocky and I wanted it to be more soulful. Jimi came along and completed it, lyrically, and I just knew he had it in him. He has the words in him, he's the real deal, a great lyricist. The song just lit him up and he really delivered, I think we all remember that moment. It's the most 'Jimi' one on the album, for me."
That they didn't go back, as they may have done in the past, to conceal the similarities to another band ahead of having to deal with toe-curling comparisons, is a sign of a devil-may-care growth that comes with experience. Doves hear what people think, but also care a little less. If something works for them, they keep it. It's a development also heard on the huge, and hugely emotive Last Year's Man. If there was a seed of doubt in anyone's mind that Doves had allowed their ambition to go unmaintained, the breathtaking swell of sound, from the church bell opener into swaying John Barry strings will be counter-argument enough. Add the Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want wall of mandolin and heart-wrenching harmonica and so much in between and it's a lethal cocktail of the best of all the music Doves have ever heard. The best of all music… ever?
Within the relative pomp, naturally for Doves, is fracture, fragility and introspection, with Andy supplying the words as an increasingly reflective father of children that don't seem so much like children anymore. He goes deeper into the meaning, saying: "It's 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."
For every bump in Doves' road, as there were, are and will, inevitably, always be, there are expanses of joy. Nothing is throwaway, but not everything is fully loaded with the drama of a passing, torrential storm. Stupid Schemes skips into the album like nothing has happened, a rainbow of cute, full-of attitude soul sass, which has its roots in Goodwin's in-between Doves/in-between other things sessions in the Swedish capital. He says: "It's 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."
Constellations Of The Lonely isn't music to accompany Doves' closing credits, any more than The Universal Want appeared to anyone as a full stop as it peaked the domestic chart, delivering the band their third No.1 album. As they tick off the anniversaries to mark the releases of their classic albums and era-defining singles year-by-year, they might not know any better where it's heading than they did back then. If so much is uncertain, what can they rely on?
"Loads of artists that have been around for years are making music as good as they ever did," concludes Goodwin. "With us, it's a matter of chemistry. For all the things that we wind each other up about, the love's there."