DOVES ///
INTERVIEW BY CATONIA WHALEN ///
PHOTOS BY JESSICA ADAMS ///
CAPITOL RECORDS OFFICE ROOFTOP, NEW YORK ///
MARCH 14, 2005 ///

By now, we American fans are used to the next big British band buzz that seeps over from across the ocean. NME covers happen, they headline gigs at Glastonbury and next thing you know they come over to take on the States! If you're a British music fan, then you might have already heard of Manchester's luscious pop trio Doves...but maybe not. You see, they are not exactly one of the "it" British bands. They've somehow managed to escape that particular intense hype. And I'm glad. Don't get me wrong, they indeed succeed in their home country with No. 1 albums, stories on NME and the like; they just happen to be one of those bands that not everyone is completely familiar with just yet. And those lucky fans who have discovered them simply adore them and do their best to spread the Doves love.

Doves surfaced in the late '90s, after the demise of their previous group, the electronic dance combo Sub Sub. Now the band, Jimi Goodwin (vocals/bass) and twin brothers Jez (guitar) and Andy Williams (drums), have released their third album, Some Cities, to rave reviews here in the US and abroad. The album features a haunting ballad or two, some sweeping guitars and gorgeous arrangements. This new album is more somber than their previous efforts as it touches on themes of isolation and longing while growing up in a small town. It's about escaping the dreariness of Manchester, and that is what inspired them to start playing music in the first place.

Being a fan and a twin myself, I was excited to talk to the Dove twins Andy and Jez on the roof of their American label, Capitol Records, to find out more about their lives as a Dove.

I was reading your UK press so far for Some Cities. You guys have had a pretty good relationship so far with the UK press in your career.
Jez: Our records seem to do critically really well, but that's not why we make records. We just make sure we put something out that we are happy with every time, and we've been just away for three years, so you kind of think, "Oh God, well that's it," because they turn so fast. But I always think that if you put out quality material, then people will, you know - if you put out something very average, then they're going to hang you for it. Yesterday a journalist was talking about the British press and said if they smell bullshit, then they'll rip you apart. You know you can get criticism in other areas, but the actual music we feel is really strong.
Andy: Musically, we don't get any problems off the press. They seem to really like what we do. But you can go to our Web site and there are people who moan a bit. The purist fans can give us a hard time sometimes.
Jez: You know the "I was there first" mentality. But you're always going to get that.

I never get that fan thing where it's like, "Oh, heaven forbid that a whole lot of people find out about the band." But it's like, wait a minute, if they don't reach more fans and make more money, then they won't be doing this for very long.
Andy: That's it. It's a strange thing. People want to keep them for themselves, don't they?

Can you guys take me through the song process? Do you have things completed before you go to the studio, or do you collaborate in the studio?
Jez: I think this album was more collectively done in a room with literally bass, drums, guitar and a microphone. Quite a lot of the songs were worked out like that.
Andy: Everyone would come with the little bits they had worked out at home - perhaps a riff or a lyric or a sample or something really bare - and then all three of us would work together on it.
Jez: For The Last Broadcast, we were literally taking in completed songs and then putting it through the band filter. Not all of it, but most of it.

Did you do it on purpose to make it collaboratively this time?
Andy: It just worked out that way.
Jez: We had just come off tour for The Last Broadcast and we said, "Well, let's just get the gear in the room and see what happens," rather than working individually and then bringing it forward. We just did it to be a bit different than how we normally did it.

I wanted to ask you about a specific couple of songs on the record. The single "Black and White Town" has a marching beat like "There Goes The Fear." Have you heard any comparisons to what the song sounds like yet?
Jez: "Heatwave"!

It reminds me of Joe Jackson.
Andy: The more people get different interpretations with regards to the song, then that's cool. We just kind of roll with it.

Was it inspired by anything else specifically?
Jez: Northern soul, because we were doing a little bit of DJing and we played a lot of Northern soul. That came into the equation.

What inspired the song "Shadows Of Salford"?
Andy: Salford is a place right next to Manchester. It's a little town, and I read an article about it. We have a lot of friends from Salford, and we grew up there. The song is not really talking about us; the article was more about the famous people from Salford, and the list is quite large. A lot of really famous actors, musicians and composers came from there. The list is just wild. It's amazing. It's a very industrial town. And really the song is about having such regeneration there. The song is talking about how those people moved away - the actors and such, like Albert Finney and other Hollywood people - and how they look back on Salford with a love for the city, but they are glad to be out. It's nostalgic and wry from a different point of view, rather than writing about ourselves.
Jez: Andy came in with a sample saying, "This sounds great." We're a band who doesn't really care how we get the music, whether people sit down with a guitar or at the piano -
Andy: And a sample can be just as valued a way to get an idea for a song. We just think of it as exactly the same. It's just a process of getting from here to there, so if the sample is great then you can build other sections for it. I think we had a song within an hour. We re-did the part with an orchestra and mapped it all out. And then phoned up Sakamoto to clear it, and he was into it. It was a very natural process for us, actually. It wasn't one of those songs where it was kind of difficult. It just happened very easy for some reason.

Tell me what kind of music you were raised on. Do you have an earliest music memory?
Jez [to Andy]: You were into Hendrix, weren't you? Wasn't it your first album? Some of the Manchester bands, also the Smiths and New Order.
Andy: And a lot of electro and Blondie come to mind, because we were in a band together when we were nine, and we did Blondie and Bruce Springsteen covers.

Did you guys play anywhere with the band, or was it just in your garage?
Jez: We played at our local Scout Club. They let us do a gig there at lunch time. We met Jimi at school briefly because he didn't go to school much (laughs). He was more into cigarettes and music. Well we all were, actually. Then we met up again about four years later in a Manchester nightclub, and we decided to get together to do our first thing, which was Sub Sub.

So what made you move from the electro sound of Sub Sub to the guitar pop of Doves?
Jez: It was a slow transition, actually. We got a bit frustrated doing dance music. It's solely computer-based, and there were three of us and only one computer. So right there, that's an immediate problem.
Andy: And it wasn't very exciting to go to clubs anymore. We'd done it really, and it just didn't feel fresh anymore.
Jez: Also there was a lot of violence and trouble in the clubs in Manchester.
Andy: It just left a bit of a sour taste.
Jez: It was frustrating as well trying to be creative on computer because we all played instruments before. We started to mix it all up, playing drums and using samples, and then we just thought that we could use technology and the live instruments as well. We said, "Let's try it on drums, bass and guitar," and there was much more spontaneity. The technology would come after. Once we got the initial foundation of something, it was much more creative.
Andy: It was a slow process, but we started mixing it all up. We did collaborations with Bernard Sumner of New Order and Tricky.
Jez: And then we kind of said, "Well, we need a singer; we don't want to do instrumentals." We started auditioning for singers. We used to be on a record label called Rob's Records, owned by Rob Gretton, who used to manage New Order. He's passed on now, but he kept saying, "You should get Jimi to sing, or at least one of you to sing." And we were dismissive. We wanted to audition singers, but then we soon realized, "Hang on, this is a gang here," and we didn't feel quite right about bringing in a fourth member. We had a vibe going.

Then, did you convince Jimi or did you decide to let him do it?
Andy: We said, "Have a go at one song." And he did and said, "Wow, this is actually sounding all right." It was a slight confidence-building thing. It was a slow process, but we decided we can learn from our mistakes from Sub Sub and that we wanted to work on an album, not just put out a single to see what happens. We wanted to get a whole body of 12 songs together and make sure we got everything right before we put it out.

And now you've put out your third album, so it's working! You're playing a sold out show at the Bowery Ballroom here in New York. Do you have any New York stories from previous shows here or a memory of your first time in New York?
Andy: We did a gig with the Strokes at the Bowery for our first show in New York. [And] the Irving Plaza show is one that I will always remember: the gear went down in the middle of the gig, and the sampler went down and we actually had to go off stage.
Jez: We literally had the back of the sampler open to try to fix it because we hadn't worked out an acoustic set, so we couldn't carry on. We all just had to go off stage and hope that the crowd didn't get pissed. There was the whole crew with the samplers, taking them apart backstage.
Andy: The crowd was brilliant, though. Just fantastic. They were up for it. When we'd got most of our shit together and got back on stage, then the place just went off.
Jez: To come back to a small venue is going to be good. We decided to keep venues smaller this tour just to create a buzz.

Can you tell me what Some Cities' producer, Ben Hillier, has worked on previously?
Jez: He did the Blur Think Tank album and worked with Clinic and Depeche Mode. He's brilliant. He's sort of on our level. We could leave him to do all the parts that used to really stress us out.
Andy: He's the first producer that we worked with on the whole album. The last two albums we produced ourselves - only had help on one or two songs that we couldn't really nail ourselves, and then we'd get help in. But this one, we made a decision early on just to do something different than the last two. We thought, "How can we change our process?" We decided to work on the whole album with a producer. We're really lucky, because we are in a position to get a lot of producers who want to work with us.

So you had a list to choose from. That's great.
Andy: We met with some great people, some people that we might work with sometime. We met Ben and just connected on a personal level, and we agreed on similar ideas musically. He's up for experimenting, and he likes to work quick.

Are you guys big Echo and the Bunnymen fans? I noticed that you thanked "Max" in the liner notes.
Jez: He's a mate and loaned us a guitar for the recording. It's really funny, because we recorded in Liverpool for about five weeks, and we found out that Mac is an off-his-head scouser* - but he's a really good guy. ///