Entering the Decagon: Doves at #9

A very different sort of band from the previous entry, the Doves are one of the best Brit alternative bands out there these days. After a dance incarnation as Sub Sub and a fire to their studio that forced them to start afresh, they've put out four albums since 2000, all worth having. They draw comparisons to Elbow frequently, but there are some key differences:

1) We get two vocalists here, bassist Jimi Goodwin (75% of the time) and drummer Andy Williams (the other 25%), both generally easier to listen to than Guy Garvey's full-of-marbles delivery; and

2) The secondary influences are more from electronica, which was what the Doves used to do way back in the day, than from prog.

But other than that, the comparisons work well enough. The Doves make serious, moody rock that keeps them distanced from most of their twee contemporaries; they're too grounded to bear even a resemblance to Coldplay or their ilk, although both peddle grandeur. You can't use a Doves song to make the girls swoon; there's no "The Scientist" in the oeuvre or any "I'm a sensitive guy; love me" trick in the bag.

Their relevant works are:
Lost Souls (2000), a cloudy-day album that's one of the few where a band can play dilettante and have it sound better for it. This is probably still their most intriguing work and it's recommended without reservation. Getting this album the year it came out marked a turning point in my becoming serious about musical innovation, especially the production end, which this album forced me to notice (this might be my favorite album from a production standpoint).
The Last Broadcast (2002), a sunny-day album that was just as intriguingly produced as the first one and has the lion's share of the band's hits, including the band-defining "There Goes the Fear." This album is their best evidence of how they can turn out a killer single that's so good because it's innovative, not because it's a more mainstreamed version of what they're doing already. I kinda miss this those days for albums, where singles are now misleading in the case of several bands because they consciously write one. That's a different topic, though.
Some Cities (2005). This album is good, but not as good as the first two, for a couple of reasons. First, their general theme of satellite towns (city suburbs if you prefer) decaying calls for a more direct approach to the music. They pull this off well, but this album's more gut-punch than drowning, which is not my first choice for their style. Second, this album is primarily produced by Ben Hillier rather than the Doves by themselves. Hillier is one of the best producers in the business at the moment (his work the same year with Depeche Mode's Playing the Angel singlehandedly resurrected their competence), and his work here is spot-on; it's just not the Doves, who are some of my favorite producers ever. Still some great singles here, like "Black and White Town," but the album as a whole doesn't feel as essential as the last two. There's also a tendency here to repeat the four-on-the-snare beat that they used to great effect on earlier songs like "Pounding" (and Coldplay used all over the place for awhile). It works once an album or so, but not for too many songs. Also, "Walk in Fire," generally a fine song, uses the same structure, chord sequences, and drum ideas as "There Goes the Fear," and feels like a poor imitation every time. This is a rare misstep for them.
Kingdom of Rust (2009), sitting somewhere in between their directness and sprawl. The title track is one of their best ever, bearing a passing resemblance to "There Goes the Fear" but being built completely differently, with a '50s country motif (walking bass and all!) merging into their signature warm epic sound. On the whole, there are higher highs and more tepid lows (no true lows) than on Some Cities, although it's a more interesting album on the whole than its predecessor. There are purely "ok, that was a decent enough song" songs ("Winter Hill," "The Greatest Denier," "Spellbound," and "Lifelines"), more so than the other albums, but the rest feel vital. Still behind their earlier work a tad, but compensated for by the title track. It's really that good.

Nine qualities analysis:

1) Chord sequences. Lost Souls had plenty of odd ones, like on "Here It Comes," with different innovative ones for verse and chorus. Since then, they haven't been trying here, which is a right shame. It's close to a liability for them now, but you can always retreat to their earlier work if it irks you.

2) Song structure. They mess with this all the time, and it's a strong plus. This may be what they traded chord sequences in for, as their best surprises have been later on. "There Goes the Fear"'s snare doesn't come in for about 1:30, and when it does, it surprises with its outright ferocity, hogging the spotlight for the rest of the song. "Snowden" off Some Cities has several moving parts, including a surprise distortion-o-rama in the middle that crackles out just as suddenly but still moves the song forward and an increase in tempo afterwards. "10:03" off Kingdom of Rust is sold entirely off its structural surprise. They also have a knack for surprise instruments hijacking mood effectively. Points here.

3) Mood. It's their bread-and-butter; listen to "Kingdom of Rust" if you don't believe me. What sets them apart from their contemporaries is how they use their mood elements. They're explored more for their own sake than for any obvious references (which bothers me about many alternative/indie rockers. We get it; you like New Order and cheap vintage synthesizers. Homage is not innovation.) Plus, the choices for mood are integral fabric of the songs; the Doves are adept at taking textures that would be novelty, "look at what we did" items in the hands of others and turning them into mood setters. "Snowden"'s first important layer post acoustic-guitar is this strange warbly choir that would be more cheesy than affecting with everybody but them. The kitchen sink is loaded with mood tools, but they're used correctly every time. This gives them both uniqueness and appropriateness of mood, a potent combo anytime a band pulls it off.

4) Layers. I was ignorant of layers until Lost Souls hit my ears; in the ensuing 9 years, I've craved excellence of layers (this may have accelerated my foray into electronica, come to think of it). Not only are there plenty of things to follow, they're unusual choices. Probably aided by their earlier electronic days (or initially to hide the fact they weren't virtuosos), the Doves aren't afraid to sound unremotely like a live band; that "macho" factor has always been dumb if you're not an improv band, and they're right to abandon it. It sounds like there are always 10 times as many tracks are you're picking up in any of their songs. Great example for layers here is "Words," off The Last Broadcast. The first verse/chorus is built largely off a chiming guitar line; pleasant but nothing by itself. Second verse, it gets doubled up note-for-note, rhythm-for-rhythm with a glockenspiel. I kid you not. Third verse? They add a glockenspiel harmony atop the whole thing. And it never sounds pretentious or "cute," two of the normal uses of glockenspiel by their contemporaries. They legitimately thought glockenspiel was the necessary textural element to take the guitar line to the next level for impact. And they were right.

5) Genre-bending. They're more a song-to-song difference than within a song, but they've turned up with some surprises, like the acoustic guitar+woodwinds+strings pastoral scene of "Friday's Dust" (seriously, there are oboes and clarinets all over the place), the band-admitted Blade Runner-sounding "Jetstream," and "Compulsion," which has somewhat justifiably been compared negatively to Blondie's "Rapture" but has enough merit on its own. There's slap bass and all sorts of white-boy funk in it. They're also not glued to one strain of alternative rock, writing in several tempos and feels. A slight positive overall.

6) Innovation. They were one of the first prominent Britrock bands to establish this template, one that's neither the retromania of Oasis nor the overt oddity of Radiohead. That's not innovation per se, but depending on how many bands follow in the wake of Elbow the way Elbow's success can be partially traced to the Doves, this may prove a more enduring strain than their forebears.

7) Rhythm. Andy Williams is a fantastic Larry Mullen type drummer on his own, but their production sense gives layers and moods that most alternative bands wouldn't bother with. "There Goes the Fear" is an obvious masterpiece, but "Darker" with its loose groove shows there's more than one side to them, and "Kingdom of Rust"'s use of brushes for that '50s county feel is masterful in a tonal way rather than obvious competence. Very few bands in 2009 could pull off the shades necessary to pull the song off convincingly. Their rhythmic versatility is a major factor in their uniqueness, and is most certainly a strength.

8) Production. As my flagship song for it in my "Eight Qualities of Music" post, I don't need to say too much about it here, but they turned me on to how intriguing production is its own analytical category. Their production style, like on "Catch the Sun," "makes" their songs several times. Give the song to another band and it would be average; let the Doves multitrack it, and it becomes special. They seem to be precisely those chaps who say "oh we can fit in one more part" before finishing the track, relentless studio tinkerers in the positive sense. I know of very few producers who can hold a candle to them (BT and Steven Wilson are the only two in my collection who are in the same league). A Doves song is a production, and that's the key difference among peers.

9) Album construction. They always do well here, helped primarily by a variety of tempos and feels in the original material. Their singles are better highlights in their album context, a standard indicator of a good job on this element. It's usually more rewarding to listen to a Doves album than a Doves single.

So we have positives on 2,3,4,7,8,9. Blu Mar Ten was 3,5,6,7,8,9, so they're equal on overall strengths. Hopefully the contrast between styles but similarity of analysis shows how I view music generally and how liking different genres is pretty easy depending on your perspective. You the reader probably have a similar set of analytical categories, whether conscious or un-, that influence why you like the range of genres you do. Starting off with an alternative and a drum'n'bass/chillout band is a great primer into that range for me.