The Sound on Sound give the low down on last night’s intmate show at the newly refurbished crocodile cafe (excellent venue btw!) and look forward to doves Sasquatch festival appearance:
A large part of the Doves dynamic relies the interplay of harmonies and backup singing, looped and heavily reverbed vocals bouncing off of each other and the walls in ways few bands even attempt. Last night the full package was notably missing as guitarist Jez Williams had lost his voice in the previous few days during the start of an American tour. Bassist and lead voice Jimi Goodwin soldiered on unphased for the most part though, getting the necessary backups from a positively excited crowd when needed.
To read the full review and view the awesome pictures, click here.
At last, we have a San Francisco review, an awesome one at that. With some of the best pictures I have seen on this tour. Thanks to Chov for bringing this one to our attention.
From Hippies Are Dead:
Obviously, however, enthusiasm can only take you so far, and at some point you need to match it with technical skill. Lucky for them, Doves has it in spades. It’s enough of a miracle that the band can reproduce their sound live, but that they can do it so dynamically and accurately, and then add a layer newness on top is simply stunning.
To read the full review and see the awesome pictures, click here.
L.A.-based music blog, The Scene Star has posted a review of last week’s show at the city’s Wiltern Theater.
The band opened with Kingdom of Rust track “Jetstream,” which seemed to mirror the overall performance, as the night continued to build progressively, just like the song.
With all the LA love of recent days. We have not forgotten San Francisco! The band played the regular set at the sold out fillmore, with the addition of the US tour premier of Compulsion.
We haven’t come across any reviews as yet, if you have a review let us know. Here are some awesome photo galleries & video:
Doves are to be hosting this week’s edition of MTV2’s Subterranean. Check out some video of the band on the tour bus, trying to film the show, its pretty funny. You would think Jimi would know the difference between the Williams twins by now!! :)
Billboard have given the LA Wiltern a positive review:
Purple lights bathed the crowd in the mellow gauze of the new album’s “10:03″ while distressed images of x-rays and insects flashed across the video screens during “Rise”— one of three standouts played from the group’s 2000 debut “Lost Souls,” along with first and second encores “Firesuite” and “Here It Comes,” respectively.
Andy Williams’ fervent drumming is often times the focal point of the band’s onstage chemistry, evidenced most clearly during the mammoth thump of a crowd favorite, “Black And White Town.” Watching brother Jez squeeze every drop out of his effects-drenched guitar rig during the set’s closing number, “There Goes The Fear,” was almost as compelling.
musiczeitgeist.com have also given the LA show a very positive review:
It wasn’t that brothers Jez and Andy Williams, along with bassist and primary vocalist Jimi Goodwin (all ably backed by Martin Rebelski on keys) so much delivered scorching performances as much as they simply maximized each song’s live potential. In this setting, newer numbers from Kingdom Of Rust (including the countrified title track and especially “The Outsiders”) suffered no risk of being overwhelmed by older, near-iconic songs such as “Pounding,” “Words,” “Snowden,” or “Almost Forgot Myself.” Contextually speaking, the “new stuff” shone brighter than on album and as brightly as anything else they’ve done in concert previously.
To read the full review, click here. Note: Doves did not support Coldplay on their first US tour. Doves played their own headline tour early 2001. Doves had The Strokes supporting on that tour!
In a short review posted at their Doves mini-site today, NME.com has described Doves’ recent performance at L.A.’s Wiltern Theater as “a triumphant return”…
“Jesus, man, it’s been a long time since we’ve played here and it’s good that you’re with us,” frontman Jimi Goodwin told the huge crowd, who cheered back in response.
“It’s Saturday night and you’re dressed for a night on the town,” he added, surveying the audience. “There’s even a couple f***ing in the top row.”
LA Weekly.com has today posted a great review of Doves’ recent show at the city’s Wiltern Theatre.
Doves, on stage and record, are all about consistency: set (and career) standouts are subtle and troughs shallow. They marry baggy Madchester roots to U2’s sense of scale and cop strummy Brit-pop attitude while bristling with “Bristol sound” (Portishead/Tricky) electro/organic textures. Their all-eyes-off-us, bloke-down-the-pub lack of pretense last night only left their music more vivid. There was appreciative between-song bonhomie and de rigueur big screen projections, but essentially this was four musicians playing tunes.
To read the full review, click here. The site also features a slideshow of photos from the concert, here.
Having just listened to FM94/9 sonic big chill show. I just feel the need to set the record straight. The host Amanda hinted that our twitter page, could be one of those twitter’s, that pretends to be official, but is not. We have never claimed to be official, had Amanda read our bio, and followed the link, she would have seen it is run by us, a fan site. Anyhow, I just wanted to get that off my chest, the last thing I myself, or Justin wants is to mislead people into thinking we are trying to represent the band. We just post news/reviews and whatever we find online about the band and hope people find it helpful to have all that, in one place. Which we know you do. :)
So that’s that. Otherwise, great interview Amanda. Your show has some great music on it. Thanks to everybody who has been twittering setlists, pictures and what not, of the shows on the US tour so far. I was a bit worried we wouldn’t hear much. So its been great so far. Thank you! Keep it coming.
Danny MacAskill is the star of the next doves video, for which we believe will be Winter Hill. He has become a youtube sensation in recent times. Click here to read his story.
The Malaysia Star have given Kingdom Of Rust a rather lukewarm review:
However, Some Cities (2005) didn’t have quite the same impact on me, despite emulating its predecessor as a chart-topper. Even though the odd quality tune like Almost Forgot Myself, Someday Soon or Ambition was present, far too much of it felt like filler material. What was worse was that Doves seemed to be slowly losing their personality.
As for this latest in their oeuvre, I have to say that Kingdom of Rust leaves me lukewarm. In fact, the opening cut Jetstream creates the impression that this album will see Doves rediscover their dance roots especially as there are guest turns by Tom Rowlands of the Chemical Brothers and Massive Attack knob-twiddler Dan Austin. Even though that turns out to be misleading, the problem is that there is too much pedestrian upbeat rock and not enough of the trippy melancholy stuff they first came up with.
If that isn’t enough for you, click here to read the rest.
The San Diego City beat have reviewed Kingdom Of Rust, they also give a mention to Thursday’s show at the House Of Blues, in their gigs section:
Kingdom of Rust (Astralwerks) 8.0
Goes well with: rain, heartbreak, a good buzz
The Manchester Brit-pop trio returns after a four-year hiatus. And while Jimi Goodwin and twin brothers Jez and Andy Williams didn’t spend the break dramatically changing their sound, the recently released Kingdom of Rust may be their best album yet.
Doves have always had a knack for churning out finely crafted, melancholy pop tunes alongside crowd-pleasing, anthemic sing-alongs. Their 2000 debut, Lost Souls, showcased the threesome’s seemingly effortless transition from house / dance producers Sub Sub to their current incarnation by implementing a perfect amount of electronic atmospherics into more organic rock tunes. Follow-ups The Last Broadcast and Some Cities cemented the band’s place in the upper echelon of pop pushers and never once dipped into the bowl of soft Coldplay cheese while doing so. Those two records were just less gloomy, which altered the formula slightly.
But Kingdom brings it back from partly cloudy to overcast, and it makes all the difference. From the meandering cool of “Compulsion” to the whip-cracking sharpness of “House of Mirrors,” there’s a nice variety to these storms. Even radio-ready nuggets “10:03″ and “The Outsiders” aren’t totally comfortable in their pop confines and fray at the edges
In The Clubs: Plan B
Doves @ House of Blues. Probably the best British band that you don’t listen to, Doves have released four excellent albums that approximate what Coldplay would sound like if they actually had balls. Plus, these guys have been around forever in one form or another, so they know their way around a melody.
Drowned In Sound, have today posted a review of Doves recent show at Nottingham’s Rock City venue.
What is apparent with Doves current live show is the way the new songs glide almost effortlessly into the set with the minimum of fuss, as if they had always been there. ‘Jetstream’ could be their epitaph if they ever were to call it a day, its five minutes of sonic escapism flitting from atmospheric Eno trajectories into anthemic krautrock at the switch of a lyric, while ‘Winter Hill’ and ‘The Outsiders’ fuse acid house reared grooves and laid back reverb drenched rhythms with a sense of muted ambivalence that becomes even more apparent during the latter’s us-against-the-world battle cry. Add to that ‘Compulsion’, which transforms the Spencer Davis Group’s ‘I’m A Man’ into a 21st Century liturgy and you can see why many of these more recent compositions are undeniable highlights of the evening.
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