Doves Some Cities Review

For a band who have built a rock career out of being rain-lashed, rueful Mancunians, Doves begin their third album on an uncharacteristically sunny note. Andy Williams's insistent drums on the title track are pure Motown - belying, perhaps, the trio's dancing roots as Sub Sub. Brother Jez Williams's reverberating guitar rings out boldly on 'Some Cities', as though communing with U2 from across the Irish Sea. Singer Jimi Goodwin has never sounded so upbeat, his voice momentarily free from the gruffness that cloaked it on preceding Doves albums, 2002's The Last Broadcast and their debut, Lost Souls.
Where is the obligatory miasma of old industry and dirty weather, you wonder; the thunderheads stripped of silver linings? Even the next song, 'Black and White Town', swings perkily (as its Top 10 status last week confirmed) as it tells of the emptiness of satellite towns. Later, there are even more opalescent musical episodes that, strangely, recall the fairyscapes of Mercury Rev, the polar opposite of Doves' northern, urban, down-in-the-mouth, would-be epic rock.
The Dove-grey fog sets in later, after a fashion. But Some Cities ' sprightly opening throws into relief a set of expectations about Doves that don't necessarily hold water. Misunderstandings hover around the Manchester trio like steam. They are not really that dour, for instance. Doves' debut, Lost Souls, may have slotted easily into the grim-up-north canon, but its sequel, The Last Broadcast , strove, albeit in a lugubrious way, to find a bright side, even while its title smacked of finality. So does Some Cities.
The main misunderstanding about Doves, though, is that they are a great band whose moment - unlike, say, Radiohead or Coldplay - has never quite come. Although Doves scored a No 1 album last time around, Some Cities looks likely to crank the trio up a few more notches in the nation's estimation - not least because significant portions of it sounds like U2 (especially 'Walk With Fire') or Radiohead circa OK Computer, except with a few more bells and filigree. Producer Ben Hillier (best known for his work for Elbow and Blur's Think Tank) has presumably brought this technologically literate spangle to Some Cities, adding mysterious new dimensions to the likes of 'Almost Forgot Myself' and 'Snowden' (sic). But although it will doubtless be regarded warmly come next December's best-of lists, this still isn't a great album, merely a pleasant one.
Doves make the kind of serviceable, melancholy rock that reassures otherwise bluff men that emotions - especially emotions about Manchester - are things it's OK to have. But there is just something rather uneventful about the plodding anthemics at the heart of these songs. They make majestic shapes, but remain trapped in a four-square rock dynamic. 'The Storm', for instance, borrows a bit of what Portishead had, but the heavy atmospherics don't sufficiently disguise the lack of a viable song.
'One of These Days' boasts both clever oscillations and straight-ahead guitars but, for all its layers, remains curiously unmoving. The more melancholy songs, such as 'Ambition', use effects such as echoes to create a sense of plangent scope that the songs don't warrant.
Doves are at their best when they don't live up to cliches about themselves - when they surprise us. 'Sky Starts Falling' deploys those Motown drums again, joined by an edgy guitar. Goodwin, Williams and Williams have remembered to write a tune and when their guitars crash in, it's with purpose and vitality. Wallowing is what everyone expects of them, but Doves really prove their worth when they perk up.