Doves-Kingdom of Rust
Doves are from Wilmslow, Cheshire, and the north-west has long been a presence in their work. We're not talking about the kitchen-sink dramas of the Smiths' Manchester or the Beatles' Liverpool here, but the topography of the entire region. This is a band who not only named a track on their second album, 2002's The Last Broadcast, after the M62, the motorway that links Hull to Liverpool, but recorded said track under one of its flyovers. Social division was the subject of their best single thus far, the northern soul stomp of Black and White Town, from 2005's Some Cities; there's even an old B-side called Northenden, after an area of south Manchester that was once rural but was absorbed into the city years ago. Visitors be warned: apparently "the kids are deranged" and "love guns and kidnap".
Recorded on a Cheshire farm, fourth album Kingdom of Rust sees singer and bassist Jimi Goodwin, guitarist Jez Williams and drummer Andy Williams finally develop these threads at length. It's a meditation on their surroundings, peaking on the title track, and current single, with its juxtaposition of heavy industry and natural beauty, of "cooling towers" and "thunder booming out on the moors", the scenery accompanied by driving, stadium-sized rock, the kind U2 have temporarily forgotten how to create. In fact, this bid to render the landscape in musical form makes Kingdom of Rust a Lancastrian Joshua Tree and, should anyone miss the point, the heartbreaking video for the title track is a snowy road movie, destination Blackpool, Vegas of the north.
Previous albums never quite lived up to the band's facility for knockout singles, but this one holds the attention. There's a dreamy, addictive sadness to proceedings, their customary gruff melancholy now inflated to match the panoramic setting. It's present in Jetstream's fantasies of escape, an airport scene whose clattering drums deliberately evoke an airliner juddering to life, but most prominent on Birds Flew Backwards, the mid-album breather that wistfully marks the changing of the seasons. "Summer's on the way/ Now the swallows have arrived," notes Goodwin, coming over all Bill Oddie.
Despite the occasional misstep - Compulsion's monochrome funk seems to have come from another album - it's hard to shake the feeling that Doves have found an extra gear. It's probably down to nothing more than maturity, which, given all Elbow's recent accolades, is a more valuable currency in an era when blinking means you risk missing most artists' entire careers. Doves' record company will doubtless be hoping for an Elbow-style second wind of their own, and in some ways the bands are similar - sad sack blokes who never make bad records but, until recently in the case of Guy Garvey's mob, could never locate a properly mainstream audience either. However, Doves continue to lack a figurehead: Goodwin has Garvey's beard, but not his easy charm. Instead, they'll have to make it on the music alone. It's good enough