Fusing Radiohead’s and The Flaming Lips’ experimentation and mood-music with Oasis’s and Coldplay’s lyrics and instrumental prowess, the Manchester-based Doves have created three stellar albums focusing on stated characteristics, 2000’s “Lost Souls,” 2002’s “The Last Broadcast,” and now “Some Cities.” Just like their previous albums, “Some Cities” features hauntingly atmospheric soundscapes and strong melodies, along with the uncanny ability to make the listener depressed by just listening to it. Not straying far from their signature sound, “Some Cities” opens with a title track, a very pre-“Achtung Baby” U2-esque sounding song with a strong vocal performance from lead singer Jimi Goodwin. This song leads into the album’s strongest, most single-worthy song, “Black and White Town.” In it, Goodwin sings about escapism and living in a bad situation: “In satellite towns / there’s no colour and no sound / I’ll be then feet underground / gotta get out of this satellite town.” The vocals are strong and the instrumentals are haunting, but the song drags on near the end.
Entering into the album’s middle stretch is track four, the achingly sung “Snowden,” another song blemished by its length.
The next track is the mellow and atmospheric song “The Storm,” which may just be the Dove’s best Radiohead impersonation (and a damned good one at that). The following track, “Walk in Fire,” steps into dance-pop territory, but with mixed results; the song sounds too jazzy to fit into the rest of the album, and the vocal is too tenuous for this style of music.
Things pick up again at track eight, the haunting “Someday Soon.” Just like “The Storm,” “Someday Soon” has ‘download me’ written all over it. The strength of the album rests in these two focused, complex, and engaging songs.
The album drops the ball at “The Shadows of Stalford,” sung by an unaccredited female vocalist (that, or a really weirdly filtered Jimi Goodwin). The song is annoying and somehow drags on despite its mere two minute 44 second runtime. The ball continues to be dropped with the next track, the tedious and repetitive “Sky Starts Falling.”
“Ambition” closes the album, featuring a filtered vocal performance that sounds like the band is performing in either a concert hall or in a really, really echo-y room. In it, Goodwin sings “Ain’t a love that’s perfect / everybody knows it / ambition cuts us down.” A fitting end to the album; some of the harder-to-digest tracks feel forced and overtly downtrodden, like the band was realizing their shortcomings as they were producing them.
I recommend Radiohead’s “Kid A” instead of the Doves if you’re looking for a purely aesthetically mellow listening experience. But if you’re simply looking for a pre-“X&Y” Brit-pop fix, it’s hard to go wrong with “Some Cities.” You might want to prepare for the occasion by lighting some mood candles and curling up in the fetal position, eating copious amounts of ice cream and Oreos – this one’s definitely a downer.
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