Review:

on 2011-04-20 CharlesMartel Said:

I bet that Chris Martin sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, fearful that he'll be caught out and wishing he was really Jimi Goodwin. What I can't understand is why the Doves want to occupy the same musical niche as Coldplay, unless they either desperately want the money or hope to marry Hollywood stick insects, eat stinging nettles and call their kids Watermelon and Methuselah.

Three years after what I felt was the disastrous "Last Broadcast" and four years after "Lost Souls", the Doves have taken a few steps towards rediscovery of who they are, but are still looking for that special place in the sun reserved solely for themselves. They are making that search more difficult than it needs to be. As a result, there are times on "Some Cities" when they come across as wannabe Coldplays, and others when they seem to have lifted whole sections from the Berry Gordy book of Big Hits. (If you don't believe me, listen to the opening chords and the smack-scrape drum pattern at the start of "Almost Forgot Myself" and tell yourself it is not Martha and the Vandella's "Heatwave").

One positive is that the Doves have a better understanding of their own abilities, or lack of them, as and when it may be. They seem to have realised that they can sing of relatively dark subjects and yet wrap around them a cloak woven of upbeat, almost anthemic music. It was a formula which worked on "The Cedar Room", the definitive all-time greatest of Doves tracks, so why not try the same approach again? And they do. "Black and White Town" and especially "Some Cities" manage to do just that. The trouble is, this technique moves them too close to the antiseptic mainstream-chic of Coldplay and thereby endangers their search for an independent identity without ever threatening Coldplay's supremacy of Hampstead Heath's frappuchino-swilling self-appointed musical style police.

It takes the band four or five tracks before they begin to feel comfortable or confident enough to explore the wider range of their abilities. The first few tracks on "Some Cities" therefore are overly-formulaic, each according to its own mix. The latter part of the album contains some surprises, in terms of stylistic expansion of ideas but not enough to rescue it completely in my view. "Shadows of Salford" and "Ambition" both rely on a vocal distortion of sorts to provide emphasis to the words being sung. Neither is musically strong enough to carry this approach off, however. "Snowden" is better, but again relies on production rather than technique to get its message across.

In truth this is a better album than "The Last Broadcast" but still falls short of the promise they displayed on "Lost Souls". It seems as if the band are still suffering from an extended identity crisis, though at least by now they have realised who they are not. They seem to be perpetuated in an inability to decide whether they really want to take Chris Martin on at his own game, or provide some more enthusiastically commercial single material of their own making. Until they have resolved this identity crisis, they will never come anywhere near the standard they set with "Lost Souls" and, in all probability, Chris Martin will be able to sleep sounder in his bed.
Rating: 6/10