Coming home to roost with a new sound
After a four-year hiatus Doves are back with a new album and a UK tour. Chris Bond spoke to their drummer Andy Williams.
IF a week is a long time in politics, then four years in the fickle world of music is the equivalent of an ice age.
Entire musical genres, nevermind bands, have come gone in less time.
When Doves released their third album, the superb and strangely underrated Some Cities, in 2005, nobody had heard of the Arctic Monkeys, and Vampire Weekend didn't even exist. So it's perhaps not surprising that Doves were a little diffident about the reception that their new album, Kingdom of Rust, would receive.
The band's drummer and co-songwriter, Andy Williams, admits the record didn't come easily, or quickly.
"The first year we were coming up with new songs but they weren't pushing us on. There was the odd moment where we questioned what we were doing and the doubts do creep in, and any serious musician that doesn't have that doubt at some time or another is a liar," he says.
"It's been a long road because it gets harder to challenge yourself and come up with something new.
"We've been together for 19 years now and after that length of time you need extra effort to push yourself.
"It's easy to stay in your comfort zone, we're known for a certain type of music and we could sit and write songs like Cedar Room, but that's not what we wanted."
It's taken time for the band, which also includes Andy's guitar-playing twin brother Jez and bassist and singer Jimi Goodwin, to produce songs that matched their own expectations.
"We could have released a record a year earlier but it wouldn't have been up to par. I'm not saying we've reinvented the wheel or anything, but we've produced a record that says something and which we're excited about."
Their epic new album has certainly been well received by the music critics who've been falling over themselves to throw superlatives in the band's direction. But Andy doesn't think long-standing Doves fans will be put off by their change in musical direction.
"In our Sub Sub days we did a lot of electronic music, but with Doves we haven't really done that before, which is why this feels like something new.
"It's a bit more electronic in places, there's a New York disco style track and a bit of Kraftwerk influence, but there are still a couple of rock tracks on the album."
The trio have always had an interest in different musical techniques.
They went to school together but the brothers lost touch with Jimi before bumping into him again years later in the Hacienda. From here they formed Sub Sub which, unlike Doves, was influenced by American dance and house music, bringing us the 1993 dance classic Ain't No Love, Ain't No Use, which featured vocalist Melanie Williams and reached number three in the singles chart.
They released one full-length album, but two years later a fire destroyed their studio, equipment and demos for what would have been their second album.
Shortly afterwards they decided to lay Sub Sub and their dance-oriented sound to rest and reinvented themselves as Doves.
Their debut album, Lost Souls, was released in 2000 and nominated for the Mercury Prize, and the rest, as they say, is history.
But as they embark on a new UK tour, which rolls into Leeds next week, Andy admits he's shocked at how the music scene has changed.
"The whole landscape is completely different. When we recorded Some Cities, people weren't really downloading tracks but now it's the norm and the industry hasn't worked out how to deal with that."
Another thing they have to contend with is being compared to fellow Mancunian band Elbow.
"They're good friends of ours and they're a great band but I think we have different musical reference points," he says.
"It's a bit of a lazy comparison because we're both from the north and both the singers have beards."
But comparisons with Elbow aside, he says they're glad to be back.
"We're really looking forward to getting out there and playing our new songs. When we came back we weren't sure whether people would still be interested, so we're really chuffed that people still want to hear us."
Hopefully we won't have to wait quite so long next time.
Doves are playing Leeds O2 Academy on April 24.
The band's fourth album, Kingdom of Rust, is out now.
Doves – facts and trivia
Twin brothers Andy and Jez Williams, 39, met Jimi Goodwin, 38, when they were teenagers at Wilmslow High School,
in Cheshire.
They didn't form a band until after they met again in the Manchester club The Hacienda in 1989.
They formed Sub Sub and had a hit single with Ain't No Love, Ain't No Use, before forming Doves
Their new album Kingdom Of Rust was recorded in the band's
own studio, a converted dairy farm.
Their debut album Lost Souls was pipped to the 2000 Mercury Prize by Badly Drawn Boy's Hour Of Bewilderbeast. Doves played on the album, and also worked as Badly Drawn Boy's backing band.
Both The Last Broadcast and Some Cities entered the UK album chart at number one.
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