When Doves fly
» The Best of Doves: 2011 Australian Tour - November 22, 2010
Mancunian songbirds and purveyors of all things beautiful, Doves, took extra time out to record their latest album, Kingdom Of Rust. By ‘extra time’, one means four long years, but according to drummer Andy Williams, it was all worth it. “It took longer to reveal itself, that’s for sure,” he remarks, “Most of the stuff we wrote in the first year got scrapped and we ended up getting most of the material down in the third.” Williams cites the new album, brimming with atmospherics and added sound samples, as Doves chance to indulge themselves after stripping back for 2005’s Some Cities.
As a pre-emptory listen to opening saga Jetstream will attest, Andy, along with brother Jez and singer/bassist Jimi Goodwin have crafted something truly spectacular. That’s aided by the fact that they share song-writing and vocal duties, so much so that Williams isn’t fazed by the incredible amount of machinery he has to compete with when performing the new tracks live; “I play drums just to translate the song really, and when the loops are on I play to a click track and try to stay in time!”
Like his feathered brethren, Andy is a multi-talented instrumentalist and producer, stating that the band “all write lyrics and melodies at home as well as together, before re-grouping and piecing together a song.” With a three-way creative process occurring, added to the fact that every member can sing, how is a democratic decision made as to who lays down lead vocals on a track? “Well obviously we like Jimi to sing,” Andy concedes, “but say for instance with Jetstream, where Jez sang on the demo…you couldn’t really separate the lyrics from his voice, so he sung it. There are never any egos involved; it’s not like ‘Well I wrote this so I’m going to sing it’, if anything, it’s the opposite.”
Such is a day in the life of Britain’s hottest export, recently announced in the second wave of acts for July’s Splendour in The Grass fiesta, constantly being embraced by new fans despite being what Andy jokingly refers to as ‘The Old Kids On The Block.’ Given that Doves have dedicated songs, if not whole albums to wintry themes, with cuts like Snowden, Winter Hill’ and The Storm, it isn’t at all surprising to Andy that they’ve been asked back to play Australia’s premier winter festival. “That’s a fair point, but it’s not something I’m ever conscious of really. We actually like to play in the summer as well, we’d love to come down for the Big Day Out or something.”
The band’s newfound success in the U.S. has also led to some name confusion, with many Americans unable to fathom an indie British band with a ‘the’ tagged onto their name, something Andy finds amusing; “We’re just so over that, I mean it’s been so long now that we just gave up trying to convince people that it’s ‘Doves’, not ‘The Doves’.”
Luckily, they’re still relatively anonymous in Manchester, something Williams puts down to the fact that “our music’s more famous than us,” before admitting that its “just the way we like it. I’d hate to think of us as celebrities!” The (twin) brothers Williams relationship with Jimi has become increasingly fraternal over the long years of their existence “We’ve been working together for so long that we’re basically like brothers anyway!” From the pioneering sounds of dance group Sub Sub (which ended when their studio burnt to the ground in the mid-90s), this year marks two decades of creative partnership, something that hasn’t gone unnoticed by their record label. “I think they’ve given up on having a plan or time limit on records years ago, they’ve been very good to us,” Andy muses, “They just leave us to it…I think that’s when it can go wrong with bands, when labels interfere too much.”
Certainly allowing the band three and a half years of breathing space between records challenges that notion. Despite Doves formative years as a dance band, Andy reveals that they generally shy away from doing any remixes of their own work; “No, we usually get other people to do it. After spending so long on a song, we generally leave it to people who live in that world…we don’t go clubbing anymore and its not where our heads are anymore!” Doves’ recent shows have seen them exhuming old songs at the requests of fans, such as first hit Cedar Room and even Sub Sub’s Spaceface just for the hell of it. Bear in mind that the band has enough technology on stage to scramble the Pentagon, so pulling something out of the bag isn’t as easy as for a typical guitar group. “We’re very lucky, we’ve got technicians and a dedicated guy for the computers. So if a laptop turns off mid-set, he gets hung.”
This aids in the sonic explosion that accompanies every Doves gig, where the differing sound scapes of every song results in a veritable musical cocktail. Most importantly, after twenty years, Andy can’t see himself wanting to play with anyone else; “We’re just so lucky, we have a dedicated fan base on the ground and we get to play great gigs, what’s not to love?”
DOVES PLAY:
TUESDAY 28 JULY – PALACE THEATRE, MELBOURNE
WEDNESDAY 29 JULY – METRO THEATRE, SYDNEY – ON SALE NOW
THURSDAY 30 JULY – METRO THEATRE, SYDNEY – SOLD OUT
SATURDAY 1 AUGUST – CAPITOL, PERTH – SOLD OUT
Kingdom of Rust is out now through EMI.
