Tell me about "Doves"

Pre-emptive "why oh why must this tedious uninspired oasis- drone guitar-hating guitar music be allowed," etc answers

Dr C, this means you :-)

Eh?

They don't inspire strong feelings either way, which means that they're pretty useless, I suppose. Mostly they remind me of a sort of updated Chameleons - widescreen, well-meaning blustering big rock with all that is macho taken out. I vaguely liked that single that was in the charts recently, and bits of the first album are OK, but it's fairly grim stuff really isn't it?

Why go from Sub-Sub to this?

The new single keeps threatening to turn into "Concrete and Clay" by Unit Four Plus Two during the chorus. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, I don't know.

Nothing personal Dr C! knew you'd find them bland though, heh. Concrete and Clay. good thing surely??

Concrete & Clay - that's a good thing! The overall effect of the chorus is kind of S Club 7 with guitars

YES ALAN T! THANK YOU.

I'd been meaning to start a thread. Ok they're not tremendous but they are a very good band. They are consistently lumped in with Coldplay and other shitheads despite being considerably better and considerably different. The thing with Doves is, you can tell they were a dance act in the past because the rhythm in all their songs is so different from most of the plodding shit around. Good back line etc etc etc. Lyrically they're a bit guilty of bizarre indie phrases like "there goes the fear" but generally speaking I think they're a good band. Very good at Glasto especially when they played the Sub Sub song towards the end.

Alan I don't listen to anything non dance anymore (perhaps the odd bit of country or hiphop) but I would have time for these guys too. Definitely deserve distinction, if not massive praise.

love them to death. Fantastic band.

I actually saw Sub Sub live, but it was just a casual interest and I know just "the hit". I shall be looking for their CDs now. (I also loved the final song of the glasto set.)

Half on, half off for me. Their new album doesn't really get going until about six songs in or so, and I can't really sense an identity they have, it's more like songs are tributes to Verve, Swervedriver, Spiritualized etc. Ronan is right about the rhythms, though -- the Chameleons comment does make sense!

"The thing with Doves is, you can tell they were a dance act in the past because the rhythm in all their songs is so different from most of the plodding shit around."

Really? With the exception of the odd moment (ie the drumming at the end of Here Comes The Fear, I find the Doves to be very uninteresting from a rhythmic point a view. A lot of time (this is what annoys me about a lot of indie-pop-whateveryouchoosetocallit in this day and age) there doesn't really seem to be much thought given to rhythm at all - they merely seem to strum a guitar/whack drums four/eight times in a bar* in the most boring way possible. The Cedar Room is is a good example of this, I get the feeling that with just a little more imagination it could've been amazing.

Despite all this, and the fact that the singer has the most boring voice EVER, I actually quite like them, especially live.

*Boring muso talk, please ignore.

There Goes The Fear did lead to me being a smidge rockist and going out and buying it in order to try and get it to number one instead of Oasis... but it is really tremendous, shoegazing gone a bit cheerful. It also works really well with the video too.

But Pounding... hmm. It could very well hinge on the way that Jimi Goodwin sings 'deeeeeee-coy', which pisses me off tremendously, but I really don't much care for it at all. They're also veering dangerously close to 'token intelligent band' status, the kind of album people own to prove something about themselves (I have 150 of these, incidentally), the kind of band that boring people moan on and on about how fantastic they are, the kind of band that makes Q readers feel edgy, the kind of band that I fear I'm going to end up talking myself into a really smelly, damp and otherwise uninviting corner about...

NME.com is reckoning that they've got a chance of getting Gareth Gates off number one this weekend, which would be fantastic... but it also reckons that Weak Become Heroes is expected to do well this week, too. So that means nowt. Fingers crossed anyhow.

I don't know Matt, I think the drums are even considerably higher in the mix than most other indie acts. If I was to pull out Lost Souls right now I'm sure I could name a few tracks which made me say the thing about the rhythm. Obviously it is matter of opinion.

You enjoy a popular rock act and you didn't post to my thread? :-(

The video for "Here Comes the Fear" seemed absolutely amazing to me the once I saw it, but I was quite possibly high. I remember the song, too, so I give it high marks. I'd have been all over this two years ago.

Lost Souls passed me by and I only deigned to give a cursory listen to The Last Broadcast after a friend recommended it. Result! It's probably my favourite Brit album of the past 18 months or so. What I like about it is that yes, you can see all their reference points, and none of it is anything new, but they're actually doing something of their own with it rather than just aping everyone else. There Goes The Fear, Pounding and Satellites are AMAZING songs, the likes of which I haven't heard since Radiohead went muso, Oasis went shite and Albarn gave up being popular. I suppose one could live without M62 Song but in all I was well impressed by the album. You can feel a band identity coming on. How many recent British bands can you say that about?

"There Goes the Fear" actually put me off the album initially! I don't quite see how it became the hit it did, was quite surprised with it not being much cop.

I like Doves. They're the best of the chart topping UK indie acts at the moment. "The cedar room" especially is a great tune. But the new stuff sounds a bit mainpulative on the heart strings and gets boring after a few listens. They have got something going for them in their dance background though. The nice swooshing production and those Norhern Soul drumbeats, but it just gets a bit predictable after a while.

"The thing with Doves is, you can tell they were a dance act in the past because the rhythm in all their songs is so different from most of the plodding shit around."

I wouldn't have thought so. They seem fairly typical of post-OK Computer, proggy-indie with an electronic undercurrent. Admittedly, they (and Elbow) are the better end of this sort of stuff. Their best songs (The Cedar Room, Sea Song) seem pretty standard, rhythymically.

"I don't know Matt, I think the drums are even considerably higher in the mix than most other indie acts"

I've only noticed this on Pounding, and it'd unbelievably irritating. Lost Souls is much better than the new one.

I really liked Catch the Sun, so I bought the new album when it came out a few months ago, played it a few times, and eventually filed it away. It just doesn't grab my interest, and there are no memorable (to me) songs on it- I haven't played it since early June, and sitting here, I can only vaguely remember what it sounds like. I do recall that the atmospherics, or whatever you want to call the noise at the beginning/ending of the songs, ended up annoying me a lot because I felt that they were just sitting between me & the song.
Jimi Goodwin's voice is really blah- it's nothing that I can put my finger on, it's just not one that I'd like to listen to over & over.

Yeah, I mean like people trying to mix electronica and guitar music are just deluded fools aren't they? They're just

"prog"

aren't they?

As far as I'm concerned, the word "prog" is as meaningless as "indie", "pop" and "terrorism".

No, I won't explain, you either get me or you don't.

i love the way that, on this board, you get "i know ILM hate x" and then the answers are all full of x love!

ok doves, i've never actually heard them, but i just thought they were all this elbow, the music, the coral, embrace type bombastic maximalism indie business. and now you're telling me they're not. so, d'you reckon i would like this then?

I don't think anyone's denying they're maximalist. Are The Coral any good then?

The Coral... I dunno. I do very much like Shadows Fall, and the singer does sound like Tom Hingley, but there's the sense that they're very talented and they know it a bit too well. They should be on TOTP this week anyhow, so the old seeing it for yourself thing comes into play...

I want to deny that they are maximalist.

Also I stand by my comments about them having a groove, only the Beta Band seem to understand as well. This is one of these odd arguments anyway where one person says "oh I really hear an understanding of dance in there" and someone else says "no I don't hear that" and that's pretty much it.

Has anyone heard the new one 'some cities' yet

the single, 'black and white town' is fairly ace.

I heard the start of it and it sounded great. Then that rubbish singer started and it was all ruined.

The singer is atrocious, just the single dullest singing voice I have ever heard.

I stand by all my comments upthread as well. For an ex-dance act their use of rhythm is appalling, considering they're all pretty good songs, they deserve better.. I can't believe I'm still on this rhythm-in-indie hobbyhorse two and a half years on, but listening to something like 'So Here We Are' by Bloc Party and then comparing it to most of what Doves or Snow Patrol have released shows just what a deficiency there is.

However they were pretty great at Glasto 2003. Saw them absolutely fucked on Sunday night and they played Space Face in the pissing rain and it seemed like the perfect festival end. Then we went and sat in a tent and watched a pissed bloke trying to wave poppers under the Haree Krishnas' noses. These events are both intertwined in my head.

i just heard snow patrol for the first time cuz vh1 played the video. it was horrible. worse then coldplay. dove's singer IS bad, but he doesn't really bother me.

I think 'Run' by Snow Patrol is up there with 'Yellow' in my "fucking hell get a sense of cockfarming rhythm" hate list.

Gareth, if this is any use to you at all, I don't think you'd like them.

The Sub Sub album is pretty great, I realize now. (For some reason the first listen left me cold.)