The Doves are back with their sixth studio album, 'Constellations For The Lonely'.

First emerging in 1998 with the release of their debut, vinyl-only 'Cedar' EP, Doves’ first album, 'Lost Souls' (2000), received both press and award-panel praise, before Number One follow-up, 'The Last Broadcast' (2002) provided the trio with a major breakthrough, offering with the hit singles, "There Goes The Fear" and "Pounding". Straight-to-Number One follow up, Some Cities (2005) and the difficult birth of the much-loved Kingdom of Rust (2009) appeared before an eleven year hiatus came to an end with Number One 'The Universal Want' (2020).  And now five years later the rejuvenated trio of Jez Williams, Jimi Goodwin and Andy Williams return with the epic and hugely anticipated 'Constellations For The Lonely'.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Renegade
2. Cold Dreaming
3. In The Butterfly House
4. Strange Weather
5. A Drop In The Ocean

Side B
1. Last Year’s Man
2. Stupid Schemes
3. Saint Teresa
4. Orlando
5. Southern Bell

Blessing/curse. Division/unity. Love/hate. It’s in the context of a polarising 24-hour, digitised, globally connected world that NightjaR finds its wings. NightjaR being the nom-de-plume and smudged rainbow constellation of collaborative copy-and-paste sound-wrangling and hip-hop from Jimi Goodwin. But it’s here and it’s Mala Leche.

Mala Leche (Spanish: Bad Milk) is 16 tracks of beats and bars, vocals provided by some of the hip-hop artists at the very top of his own, personal home listening lists and interludes that throw back and forth through eras and genres in sometimes playful, occasionally awakeningly abrasive styles. How did it all come together?

“The good thing about social media is that it makes everyone available. Everyone has their contact details or their management’s contact details on their profiles. I could literally just email or DM someone.”

Goodwin has form in this, his chosen arena. Anyone paying attention to his extra-curricular activities at the same time his ‘day job’ in the still-active Doves presented him a third UK No.1 album in 2020 will have noted his production, as Coup Diablo (“Bollocks, that name! I don’t know what I was thinking!”) on Pan Amsterdam’s Ha Chu album in the same year. Improbably connecting the nocturnal, lamp-lit laboratory vibe of a home studio at the foot of England’s Peak District with Miami, Florida, Goodwin and Pan Amsterdam linked up once again this time around, with the one-time jazz musician-turned rapper’s authoritative prose and trumpet gracing first single, Space Bar and album closer, Glove Department.

Much like the basis for many of Mala Leche’s new-era collaborations, the two have never met in person, yet the creativity flowed easily through fibre optics and across time zones.

“I like clever wordsmiths,” says Goodwin, “not just cusses and Pan is exactly that kind of artist. He’s The Don. Full respect to him, he got fed up with the jazz scene he was part of, frustrated by the bullshit. He’s gone and called it out and done his own thing. You’ve got to admire that.”

Kindred spirits. NightjaR finds Goodwin, whilst not breaking ranks as a member of Doves (“They are my peers, man!”) in the same way as Pan rejected the accepted notions of local jazz circuit, it’s something that visibly lights new creative fires in him. “I make a beat every other day. There’s no agenda, nothing obscure or clever, it’s just instinctive. There came a point when I considered getting these rappers involved… to bring it out of it just being me on my own… YOU CAN’T DO THAT JIMI! Turns out that I could!”

First fruits borne of the collaborative seeds sown on Mala Leche are heard on the album’s second track, Baby Don’t, where both Birmingham, UK-based rapper SonnyJim and Detroit’s Quelle Chris commit their voices to a tantalisingly brief (only 2m 14s) NightjaR beat laced with chiming, crystalline melodic motifs. The two rappers had already put out music in combination, drawing Goodwin’s ear with the SonnyJim’s 2016 release, Mud In My Malbec, featuring Quelle Chris on the track, Dorchester. Bandcamp has proved revelatory while constructing the new NightjaR world, with these discoveries, Pan Amsterdam and others coming directly through that platform.

Not all commitments have come without the warmth of personal encounter, however. New York’s Homeboy Sandman, skimming studied street verse over the stand-up bass-driven track, Pirates, appears on the album following a personal, if chance encounter. As Goodwin recounts, “I was in New York in 2017, just exploring the city on my own. One day I’d been in touch with Homeboy Sandman, just exchanging messages, just asking if I could send him my beats. Same day, totally by chance, I come out of the subway and bump right into him! Whatever the ways of contacting these rappers I’ve been able to put together my dream team.”

Closer to home, the unmistakable voice, meter and lyrical proclivities of Sleaford Mods’ Jason Williamson land, without ambiguity, on Blood Red Dead. With the peal of a repeating, distorted guitar lick and a single, grounding organ note, Williamson’s Nottinghamshire brogue is welcomed through a longstanding sense of mutual interest and respect. Of the same generation, compatible politics and frequently lost in a world of instant, all-too-public messaging, the pair are long-time acquaintances.

“We’ve never met in person,” admits Goodwin, “but we’re on the phone to each other all the time. I was blown away by what he’s done on ‘Blood Red Dead’. It’s totally ‘him’. I admire people who are just like ‘fuck you!’ and working and living with that sense of conviction. Just people who can completely be themselves.”

Much like Sleaford Mods, Doves or any band name, NightjaR is a useful alias in the process of Goodwin becoming, like Williamson, completely himself. After percolating over seven years and finally facing the prospect of going public, the name crept from corners of inspiration linked to both voodoo doctor Dr John’s unsettling, 1968 debut album, GRIS-grisand the bird of the same name. Nocturnal creatures camouflaged from discovery while roosting in the daytime, and ascending to mythical status for an ages-old reported ability to steal milk from goats, the enigmatic bird is a well-chosen totem to Mala Leche’s similar sense of post-dusk mystery.

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
1. Broken Saturday Night
2. Baby Don’t Feat Sonny Jim & Quelle Chris
3. Burnt Up Nights
4. Piano Heights Feat Pruven, Vast Aire & Burgundy Blood
5. Smashing Little Boat
6. Pirates Feat Homeboy Sandman
7. Harlem Dream
8. Blood Red Dead Feat Jason Willamson
9. Sylvester
Side B:
1. Space-Bar Feat Pan Amsterdam
2. The Fuck It Boogaloo
3. Anything Something
4. Thee Omen Feat Homeboy Sandman
5. Mala Leche Feat Guilty Simpson
6. YOU BASTARD
7. Glove Department Feat Pan Amsterdam

For Fans Of: The Marked Men, Ducks Ltd, The Sound, Mission of Burma, Straightjacket Fits, The Wipers, Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Hüsker Dü, Bailter Space. Auckland, New Zealand post-punk group Guardian Singles return to Trouble In Mind for their follow-up to 2021's debut with "Feed Me To The Doves", a ten-track socio-political burner addressing our collective spiritual chaos that pulls influence from across the history of punk & permeates it into something decidedly Aotearoan & uniquely their own in ways that are both personal & universal.

"Feed Me To The Doves" is the first album to feature the current, long-standing lineup of Thom Burton (guitar, vocals), Fiona Campbell (drums), Yolanda Fagan (bass), and Durham Fenwick (lead guitar). The band has been playing live together now for a few years & it shows. The songs herein vary from the deeply personal, to sketches or postcards, as Burton says "…scribbled while watching the dregs of a delirious culture war play out through broken smartphones and praline vape clouds." Expertly recorded at Neil Finn's Roundhead Studios in Auckland by engineer Steven Marr, who Burton says had a "great sense of being able to keep the urgency of the songs while adding lushness and keeping things sounding like they're about to break at any second". Marr helped turn the album's scrappy beginnings into something more cohesive and beautiful.

TRACK LISTING

1. Chad And Stacey
2. Pit Viper
3. Manic Attraction
4. Metal Fingers
5. Bleak Park
6. Com Trans
7. Nightmare Town
8. Untied, United
9. Shimmer
10. Ground Swell

Black And White Town was the lead single from Doves' third album Some Cities and was released in 2005 on Heavenly Recordings.

This version of the Doves anthem is an evocative echo of the original track's beautiful vocal melody.

The penultimate song of Doves’ debut long player ‘Lost Souls’, 'Reprise' revisits the guitar figure from other album track ‘The Man Who Told Everything'.

Released in the year 2000 on the Heavenly record label, the Mercury Music Prize nominated album that Manchester icon Johnny Marr called "a vast 3am melancholic beauty brought to life" went on to gain Top 20 status in the UK and was described by the NME as "the first great album to come from Manchester since ‘Definitely Maybe’...”

This Official Music Box version of this instrumental classic is a haunting coda to the beauty of the original Doves track.

The Falling Doves a force of electric energy. Their music is a fusion of stadium rock with garage rock familiarity, a sound that has helped the guys win over the ears and hearts of fans around the globe.

Personally mentored by Phil Solemn (the Rembrandt’s), the late Scott Weiland (Stone Temple Pilots), and Pete Best (the Beatles), the Falling Doves have additionally shared the stage with such established acts the likes of Echo & The Bunnymen, Peter Murphy of Bauhaus, Fastball, and Gilby Clarke; the list grows with each passing year.

Prior to COVID-19, their "Electric Dove World Tour" was set to sweep through Europe, Asia, and Latin America with nothing short of thunder and lightning. The band was able to tear Australia down before restrictions were set in March.

The band is now rescheduling those missed dates, with a summer tour, dubbed the “Lightning Strikes Twice Tour,” The band will be visiting as many countries as allowed by the ease of restrictions the remainder of 2021.

While in the UK, at the height of the pandemic, the band sought refuge at the legendary Abbey Road Studios, working under the direction of engineer / producer Chris Bolster with pre-production done at Motor Museum Studios in Liverpool (Oasis, The 1975, Arctic Monkeys ) for a future album, called ‘Liverpool,’.

About the Double Vision 2022 World Tour in April 2022, will bring the elements of a stadium live concert production into small halls, with a rich visual texture of music videos and the element of lights and theater you would expect from bands like Aerosmith and the Rolling Stones.

Don’t let the lightning pass you by as the storm rolls through your town and don’t forget your leather jacket. 

April 2002 saw Doves return, with the Roses inspired "There Goes The Fear" single crashing into the Top 3. It was a massive song, all groove, headrush melody and scope, but even that couldn't prepare us for the sheer brilliance of the album that followed. Every single song is fantastic and whilst still heavy on the sadness, this is a defiantly uplifting record. The appropriately titled "Pounding" is testament to that; it's one of many heart-tugging anthems. Elsewhere Doves cover folk, gospel and early-Floyd style psychedelia, effortlessly blending it into a singular listening experience. It was around this time that another musician (I forget who) described Doves as 'pure emotion on tape'. Whoever he was, he was right! 

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Two years on from their debut and lead single “ There Goes The Fear” felt like a Roses style statement of massive intent. It was a monster! Toweringly majestic and superbly arranged, it was the perfect introduction to a record which was a clear step up in every way. Who knew sadness could be so thrilling?!

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 - Intro
A2 - Words
A3 - There Goes The Fear

Side B
B1 - M62 Song
B2 - Where We're Calling From
B3 - N.Y.

Side C
C1 - Satellites
C2 - Friday's Dust
C3 - Pounding

Side D
D1 - Last Broadcast
D2 - The Sulphur Man
D3 - Caught By The River

In a tumultuous 2020, the re-emergence of Doves with new music has provided a shaft of light in an otherwise brooding sky, finally landing their fifth album, The Universal Want, after an eleven-year artistic break.

The equally ecstatic and relieved response from fans and critics to the first track to emerge, Carousels, during the final, confusing throws of the UK and Europe’s strict COVID-19 lockdown in June, proved how desperately their idiosyncratic sense of euphoric melancholy was, and is, needed. Catching many off-guard, Doves unleashed a track of unfathomable depth, unfurling rich and unpredictable pockets of sound, twisted round a sample of the great Tony Allen at his very best.

“This place is wild at heart and weird on top, you just couldn’t make it up,” said Jimi Goodwin, surveying the world through his window while a global pandemic was taking root in late-March 2020. Paraphrasing Laura Dern’s character, Lula Pace Fortune in the 1990, David Lynch film Wild At Heart, Goodwin hits on the Lynchian-obsessions shared by all three Doves. Himself, Andy (drums/vocals) and Jez Williams (guitars/programming/vocals) would often find themselves hosting impromptu post-rave, home screenings in the early 1990s.

By quoting the film, the lead singer and bassist of the twice Mercury-nominated band also, accidentally, expresses what everyone else was feeling at the time of disorientation, fear and hope. Doves have a longstanding habit of doing just that.

First emerging in 1998 with the release of their debut, vinyl-only Cedar EP, Doves’ first album, Lost Souls (2000), received both press and award-panel praise, before Number One follow-up, The Last Broadcast (2002) provided the trio with a major breakthrough, offering with the hit singles, There Goes The Fear and Pounding. Straight-to-Number One follow up, Some Cities (2005) and the difficult birth of the much-loved Kingdom of Rust (2009) appeared to complete a perfect legacy if the hiatus the band called in 2010 lasted longer than anyone hoped. It certainly lasted longer than the band had expected. “It’s bizarre how quickly life just passes,” says Goodwin, reflecting on the years that turned into a decade.

The story of The Universal Want, the title itself and other tracks such as Prisoners giving an impression of the band’s disdain towards the consumerist illusion, starts in a rented house in England’s Peak District during secret, unintended writing sessions in 2017. Joining the dots, band historians note that it came a full year before announcing their live return and 18 months before they appeared together publicly. That they were a creative force once more was a near impossible secret to keep, as they worked between studios in the North West and the Midlands.

Andy Williams describes the excitement of the sessions, saying: “There were times when we felt an indescribable buzz. It was a breeze compared to ‘Kingdom Of Rust’, with one of the nicest things being just hanging out. We were never that far apart; I’d call Jimi every month. We’re too closely tied to have lost contact; I’d miss them.”

Refusing once more to fall into predictable, guitar-bass-drums, ‘plug in and play’ dynamics, The Universal Want’s overwhelming sense of intrigue owes everything to Doves’ three decades experience at the wheel of their band (a lifespan going back to their time as dance band, Sub Sub), and an autobiographical trip through the sounds of their own lives. From seaside amusements (Carousels) and the remembered heat of acid house (Universal Want) to the aimless summer days of youth (Forest House), each song sets a new reel running to show fragments of their lives and, in turn, those of their listeners. Shadows of Bowie, rare 70’s soul, Detroit House and Afrobeat are cast subtly across the shapeshifting album.

Cycle Of Hurt’s, disembodied mantra of ‘it’s a trap’, finds the band once more concerned with finding freedom in a cynical, aspirational age. A band that respects creativity itself, allowing the process to meander, it wasn’t, and isn’t their intention to write a manifesto rallying against vapid consumer culture. “When it comes to themes,” says Jez “we always find a very collaborative way forward. It’s all quite subconscious. It’s only when you look back that you can see the threads linking the songs.” 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's been plenty long enough since a new Doves album, and this one hits all of the high notes we'd expect. Superb melodies, brilliant songwriting and a crystal clear narrative throughout. It's a brilliant return after eleven years, and one we've been sorely needing.

TRACK LISTING

1. Carousels
2. I Will Not Hide
3. Broken Eyes
4. For Tomorrow
5. Cathedrals Of The Mind
6. Prisoners
7. Cycle Of Hurt
8. Mother Silver Lake
9. Universal Want
10. Forest House

Seattle's Soiled Doves are history - although the group's brief existence in no way reflects its significance in the scheme of things... The band emerged in the late 1990's as new-wave upstarts The Vogue, and by 2001 had mutated (or, rather, condensed) into the 4-piece Soiled Doves. Three of the Four Doves were soon to be members of the critically-acclaimed Chromatics, while vocalist Johnny was on loan from local heroes the Blood Brothers. Soiled Doves released a single on Arizona's collectable King Of The Monsters label, then ventured into Seattle's Paradox studio to record a full-length. Before the album was finished, it was decided that the group would lay itself to rest - Johnny's commitment to The Brothers was compromising his time, and the band were eager to get on with touring, etc. So, after a single West Coast tour in 2001, they had to split. Essential for fans of the Chromatics and Blood Brothers.