Uncaged Heat
Doves haunt Some Cities.
By Kimberly Chun

Coo-coo ka-choo: From left, Doves' Jez Williams, Jimi Goodwin, and Andy Williams found a nest near Loch Ness during the recording of their latest album.
Photo by Deirdre O'Callaghan
GOOFY ANIMAL COSTUMES , a cozy relationship with the grim reaper, and music-video versions of The Wicker Man (the original "burning man") – those are the images that run through the mind's lens when listening to cinematic dream-rock Manchester trio Doves. But it's really no stretch of the imagination: the beastie getups and dances with death have turned up on film during the band's shows, while their cover of "Willow's Song," from The Wicker Man soundtrack, surfaced on their 2003 Lost Sides rarities and B-sides collection. Likewise, despite Doves' industrial townie origins, the music on their first two albums, 2000's Lost Souls and 2002's The Last Broadcast (both Heavenly/Astralwerks), seems to sail along some sparsely populated, twilit horizon, one that was open to both lighthearted, hayseed surrealism and darker, brooding preoccupations. Doves were there to peck the flesh from the bones of the dance culture they fluttered from and transform it into something more than guano: a kind of smudgy, haunted English romanticism tinged by a love and fear of nature, in line with John Constable, The Go-Between, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

But that particular bird has flown. Some Cities (Capitol), the band's latest postcard from "Doves' World," as guitarist Jez Williams once phrased it, puts a root down at disparate musical and geographic points, coursing, for instance, between gently percolating Stereolab-like synth patterns and "Hotel California" chord progressions on "One of These Days."

"Too much history coming down / Another building brought to ground / Roads that come together / My memory never severs / The love'll never sever for me," Jimi Goodwin sensually drawls over the bluesy twang and the rock 'n' roll stomp of a title track that wouldn't be out of place on the third Velvet Underground album. Propelled by a distorted piano line and adorned with ghostly vocal effects (and dovelike coos), the album's first single, "Black and White Town," continues the down-to-planet-rock sound with a Motown buoyancy that continues through the next, over-the-top track, "Almost Forgot Myself." It's almost as if Doves have decided to light down in some cities that MTV, VH1, and all their variants forgot. Their nest may be much altered (Goodwin has said the album was inspired, at first, by the changes they'd found in Manchester when they returned from tour), but that doesn't mean they can't pull some interesting musical threads, if not beauty, from the wreckage.

And city changes never stop; the battle continues – though this time through London traffic when Williams comes to the phone to talk about Some Cities. We last spoke five years ago, when Doves were touring the States for the first time, complete unknowns supported by the even less-known Strokes. Back then, despite their newbie status, they were still fully capable of leaving the audience at Bimbo's with their jaws gaping, as they peeled through an intense set of dream-psych, ending with the trio's Hacienda-era acid house hit, "Spaceface," created in their previous incarnation, Sub Sub.

In contrast to Lost Souls and The Last Broadcast, Some Cities reflects the more improvised life of a band that has, by now, done its time on the road. Hesitant to break their flight pattern and resistant to being caged, Goodwin, Williams, and his brother Andy, who plays drums, wrote the album in rentals and cottages scattered around the U.K. (locales like Snowdonia ended up lending their names to songs like "Snowden"). "To be honest, going to a residential studio for another two months being cooped up in another room – especially after being cooped up on a tour bus – it seemed like a ridiculous idea," Williams said last week. "So I guess that's why we started to move around a bit."

Assisted by coproducer Ben Hillier (Blur), they ended up recording in Liverpool, Brixton, and in an abandoned school in Loch Ness. "It was in this tiny little village, and it kind of reminded me of The Wicker Man," said Williams. "It had this kind of homely feel to it, and it was a little bit strange."

Doves are learning to cherish those elements of animal unpredictability. "We wanted to let the mistakes happen – if there were any – and keep more of the character that may have been edited out on the last two," Williams explained. "What comes with digital technology is people start developing bad habits and try to clean everything up and may be, in fact, editing some of the actual soul out of it.

"You do hear records like that and I think obviously that's a bad thing. The thing about computers is you're always looking at music when you should be listening to it. We wanted to go back to that way of thinking when you do it with your ears rather than your eyes."

Doves are going to try their best to keep body and spirit intact, after canceling performances at South by Southwest and Coachella and in San Francisco due to Goodwin's laryngitis and voice loss. But somehow they'll also manage to avoid getting pinned down, or cooped, keeping in mind the essence of their music. "It's always been about escapism. Always escape," Williams said. "Music shouldn't be that closed." "Free Bird" jokes stop here.

Doves play with Longwave Mon/13, 9 p.m. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, S.F. $25 (tickets to May 1 show will be honored). (415) 421-TIXS, (415) 346-6000.