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Setlist from the second night at the Manchester Aviva. It sounds like this show was much louder than the previous night according to those that was at both nights.

Photo thanks to Gene!

Constellations For The Lonely peaked at #5 on the UK album chart with 13,539 sales. Other note-worthy chart positions:

Official Scottish albums chart: #1
Official vinyl albums chart #2
Official physical sales album chart #2

Setlist thanks to Philip Kelly at Doves forum.

Photo thanks to Gene!

All Music Magazine has interviewed the show:

The Williams brothers interacted warmly with the crowd, expressing their gratitude for the fans’ patience and loyalty. The connection between band and audience was undeniable, forged through decades of shared moments, and the performance at Aviva Studios felt like a celebration of this bond. .

You can read the full interview and see the great pictures of the gig they took on their website.

Only several hundred copies separate Doves from this week’s #1 album. If you can, there are multiple ways you can help the band. There is a lot going on. Here is a complete round-up..

The discounted £4.99 album download features the 3 bonus tracks. Every download goes towards the final sales tally. Download at https://doves.lnk.to/Download Both Doves store & iTunes download goes back to full price at the end of the week. So take advantage of the price drop now.

You can also enter a competition to win Latitude tix or the pictured tour merch bundle. Enter at Doves store at https://doves.lnk.to/OfficialStore

Finally, Andy & Jez are doing an in-store signing next Wednesday in London at Rough Trade Denmark St. Tix available at https://dice.fm/…/q2eegp-doves-album-signing-with-jez…

Liverpool setlist thanks to Gibbo! Note that Rise was played instead of Sea Song. Space Face finished the show!

Less than 500 copies separate Doves & The Lathums from the UK #1 album spot. If you haven’t already got your copy, now’s a good time to get one! Purchases through Thursday will count towards the album sales total for the week.

A digital download is available for £4.99 at https://doves.lnk.to/Download

EMI North is also flogging a version of the album with three bonus tracks. Featuring two more new songs & a remix of Saint Teresa. You can buy that CD at the official Doves website. Edit: The bonus tracks are now included on the download above for £4.99 for a limited time. UK only.

A reshuffled setlist in Sheffield at the Leadmill. Thank you to Maggie for the setlist!

Photo by James King

Setlist courtesy of BretsTypeWriter over at Twitter. Spaceface was played, just as it was the last time Doves performed in Leeds back in 2009.

The Yorkshire Post reviewed the gig and has this to say:

A generous four-song encore includes the crowd-pleasers Here it Comes and There Goes The Fear. Andy Williams evokes fond memories of seeing Run DMC and the Stone Roses while he was living in Leeds in the late 1980s and touchingly duets with his brother in the choruses of Kingdom of Fear, and they bow out impressively with Space Face, from the band’s ’90s Haçienda-inspired incarnation, Sub Sub. “Nothing lasts forever,” their song Renegade might suggest, but on tonight’s evidence, Doves’ creative race is not yet run.

Read the full review here.

Blinded by the Floodlights has reviewed Doves’ recent Edinburgh show, calling it “life-affirming”. Read the full review here.

Track by Track thoughts from Andy, Jez & Jimi

Renegade

Andy Williams: “As a vocalist, Jimi always brings an authenticity. This was just the rough guide vocal, there’s loads of imperfections on it, but he just nailed the mood of the song. That emotion is a million times more important than anything else. Musically, it feels quite dystopian. We were going for a bit of a Scott Walker vibe. There was a lyric in there about Piccadilly Circus and someone said, ‘Why don’t you change it to [Manchester park] Piccadilly Gardens?’ To me, the song is like Scott Walker walking around Manchester in the year 2025.”

Jimi: “There was a loose thread that kicked the record off,” Goodwin told NME. “‘Renegade’ was the first thing that we did together for it. In our minds, it’s got a Blade Runner-esque theme. It was inspired by the Roy Batty speech of how nothing lasts forever, you know, ‘I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe’.”

Cold Dreaming

AW: “We love David Axelrod and Rotary Connection. That was our attempt at creating a song from that era.”

Jez Williams: “But hopefully with a modern twist. We’re not interested in replicating the past, we’ve always taken sonics from all sorts of places. There’s always an undercurrent of abstract atmospheres underneath the music moving it.”

In the Butterfly House

AW: “This was one that Jez brought in quite early on. I really thought about the lyrical content of the song. The music was suggesting something, but I couldn’t quite grapple with what it was. I’ve always been interested in the history of murder ballads, so I thought of the image of a butterfly house where something had gone on there. I tried to create a little story about somebody coming back at night to this butterfly house and something had happened in there. It’s our subtle attempt at a murder ballad.”

Strange Weather

JW: “This was two separate songs until we realised there was a connection between them. There was about 20 different iterations of it until we nailed it. It was an enjoyable nut to crack but it wasn’t easy. The first bit is very spacious and conjures up lots of visual images, I think, then we completely flip it on its head, and it does a complete U-turn for this mad bit at the end. We played it all the way through live, which is the key. You can’t hear the join because there isn’t one!”

A Drop in the Ocean

JW: “I brought in that song. It was written in a completely different style, and we did a 180 on it. It was really fast originally, and we did it in half time. It was really important to bring out the soul of the track. If you listen to the production, it’s got that contemporary soul sound to it, that dark soul vibe that we were going for. We had the chorus, and Jimi came in and absolutely nailed the verses.”

Andy: It’s a song about us being insignificant, which can be helpful to remember when you’re going through a tough time. “A problem can be so big in your head, but it can be comforting to remember how small we are in the grand scheme of things.”

Last Year’s Man

JW: “I really like this song. It feels quite old time-y to me, it’s got a bit of a Celtic thing going on. Andy brought in the idea and then we put it through the Doves filter. My kids are 17 and 14 and, lyrically, it touches upon those feelings of not wanting them to grow up, wanting to keep them the same but everything always keeps changing.”

Stupid Schemes

AW: “Jimi brought this one to the table. The album really needs it at that point. It was perfect. When me and Jez both heard it, it sounded a bit different for us with that psychedelic lead guitar, we don’t normally do that. It’s got this really bright, optimistic feeling to it which is perfect for the record. It’s a break from the intensity.”

Saint Teresa

AW: “Saint Teresa was originally going to go on [previous Doves album] The Universal Want but we thought it would make it a bit overlong. We’ve never been interested in making an album with 20 songs on it that goes on for an hour and a half. It felt right for this one, though. All three of us are lapsed Catholics, so Saint Teresa figures in that. Jimi wrote the verses and I wrote the choruses. Again, Jimi delivers a great vocal here.”

Jimi:“By keeping it to one side, we were able to reappraise it and make it better. Andy and Jez helped out with it and it’s great that it’s found a home.“My Catholicism went out of the window years ago, but I love the iconography associated with the church. They put on a really good show. I identify with it all from my childhood. The story of Saint Teresa is fascinating“

Orlando

AW: “This was one of Jimi’s. He brought it in, and we put it through the filter. I really like his vocal on that. It doesn’t directly reference anything, but I feel it’s got a feel of some of the things that he’s been through himself—there’s metaphors in there. I’ve never asked him about the lyrics on this one but to me it feels like his statement about what he’s been through.”

Southern Bell

AW: “We’ve read that it sounded a bit like Queen, who have never been a reference for us…”

JW: “I told you at the time! It’s those bloody BVs. We actually stripped it down, it was way more Queen before, there was like 60 backing vocals on it! We wanted to do a big spaghetti western thing. I sing the first bit and then Jimi comes in and does the second bit. I really wanted to try that because the story’s about two people running out of time, running out of luck, but they’re going to go out in a blaze of glory. It’s almost like a conversation between the two of them. It worked brilliantly. Immediately, I was like, ‘That’s got to be the last song on the record.’ We knew when we did ‘Renegade’, that was the first track on the record, and we knew when we finished ‘Southern Bell’ that that’s how we were going to go out.”