Doves: the Confidential exclusive interview

Doves have always been one of the more sophisticated bands of Manchester. Or is ‘sophisticated’ the right word?

I have a funny thing about how much a place makes you and how much you make a place, or how much the people do. I’ve never been a chest-beating Mancunian, but it empowered us growing up.

What about ‘clever’ or ‘lyrical’ or ‘cultured’ or ‘complex’ or ‘crafted’. Doves are hard to pin down.

Confidential is interviewing Jimi Goodwin, lead singer, bassist, guitarist and co-composer of Doves in the top floor of an old spinning shed in Hallam Street, Stockport. This now forms the fabulous Moolah Rouge studios. So how does Goodwin tag the band?

“It’s impossible,” he says. “It’s like when one of your nana’s mates says ‘how do you describe your music?’ ‘Maybe, kind of melodic’, you say. And when you say ‘rock’, you go, ‘but not hard rock, nan, not like heavy metal and all that.’ The emphasis is on songwriting, the craft. We get lazy Coldplay assumptions, especially in America. We’ve even had Radiohead comparisons. It’s so far off the mark.”

Certainly is. People need tags, but Doves defy them. They are very much their own band.

As a unit the three principal members have been together twenty years. Jimi Goodwin and brothers Jez and Andy Williams, met in the mid-eighties at Wilmslow High. They started producing music in 1989 in Manchester. First they formed Sub, Sub and had a hit with dance track ‘Ain’t no love, (ain’t no use)’ in 1993. After a fire in their Ancoats’ studio they changed track, literally, and Doves were hatched. Studio albums to date include Lost Souls (2000), Last Broadcast (2002) and Some Cities (2005). Kingdom of Rust is the 2009 release.

Most Doves albums have a theme. With Some Cities the clue was in the title, so does Kingdom of Rust have a core controlling thought?

“You never know what you’re writing until the end,” says Goodwin, “then you see similarities between some of the lyrics and some of the themes. This was a bugger to wrestle down. There’s a lot of nature, there’s always travel or escape in Doves' albums or a desire to be somewhere or some place. This time there’s physical travel. The track ‘Jetstream’ is almost like a fifties vision of the future, the golden age of air travel,” Goodwin pauses, and seemingly apropos of nothing, says with a smile, “sashaying stewardesses in crimplene dresses.”

As the discussion continues about the album he quotes from the opening lyric of the song ‘Kingdom of Rust’, “I hear a sound, a sound above my head, a distant sound of thunder, moving out on the moor..” In a timely manner a plane flies over and the moors can be seen through the window. “It’s a positive album, all Doves' albums are,” says Goodwin.

Click here to watch our video interview - this is unedited for extra rawness, the article here is taken from it.

Listening to it, the new album is just that and also – let’s add this to the descriptors for the enigmatic band - full of the most romantic word in English, ‘yearning’.

Title track ‘Kingdom of Rust’ has all these in spades, it’s a perfect Doves track, crafted, clever, complex, lyrical and full of yearning. Full of the travel that Goodwin talks about too. It’s also pleasant to see the mini-road movie of the video set on the moors on the M62 and A672 between Denshaw and Ripponden – check out the YouTube video link below.

Sense of place, sense of the north west, seems part of Doves as much as the yearning. Labelled occasionally a ‘Cheshire’ band, because they live out in Cheshire, their identity seems more rooted in the city. Jimi Goodwin, for one, isn’t sure about the Cheshire label.

“We met at Wilmslow Comprehensive but Manchester made this band. All our families are from there, my family are from Ancoats and Clayton. I spent half my life there. I have a funny thing about how much a place makes you and how much you make a place, or how much the people do. I’ve never been a chest-beating Mancunian, but it empowered us growing up.”

The conversation drifts off into how the citizens of this city, if not careful, can become professional Manc bores about their music. We return to the complexity of sound Doves generate, the layering of instruments one over the other. It’s no surprise the band has a ‘slow or measured’, as Goodwin calls it, reputation, but how on earth do they ever finish tracks and say ok that’s enough - after all it’s been four years since their last album?

“It’s when all three of us agree,” says Goodwin. “This can be anything from a week’s work to three month’s work per track. It’s like a relay. Someone’s not quite focussed, because other stuff’s going on in life, then we all try and pick up the baton at different times and have a vision or an idea. When someone’s drained with a track, it’s hang about, I’ve got an idea. Jez is the dominant character in this, his gift for melody is incredible and his drive. But what takes the time is that we do honour and respect each other.”

Does the respect every stray over into conflict?

“No, not really. Never any fist fights, not even proper blazing rows, just snipes and sideswipes.”

Doves are definitely not in the tradition of Manchester bands that includes Oasis. Given the long shadow the latter casts over the reputation of bands from the city, they’re a timely reminder that the Manchester music story contains far more intelligence than belligerence. Kingdom of Rust sums that up.

Doves play Manchester University on 26 April To see the video for Kingdom of Rust click here