Review: Doves - "Kingdom of Rust"

I’ve always found it very challenging contextualizing Doves. On the one hand, their music cannot be discussed without mentioning the larger Brit rock movement that they are, unwilling or otherwise, undoubtedly a part of. However, on the other, their sound is such a huge departure and, let’s be honest, so much more mature than their more commercially successful peers that it seems almost insulting to mention them in the same sentence as a band like Coldplay.

Then again, “Caught by the River,” from their second full length, The Last Broadcast, was featured in one of those episode-closing, really formulaic and cheesy musically-backed narrations in an episode of Scrubs. And “Words” was used for an NBA basketball commercial. So maybe they aren’t that far removed.

I was a relative latecomer to Doves, being turned onto them by a friend telling me to listen to the utterly gorgeous single “Snowden” from Some Cities in 2005. That song is still one of my very favorites ever, and I have grown quite fond of a large part of the band’s back catalogue since then, eagerly anticipating their newest release, Kingdom of Rust. And while no song may illustrate how Doves distinguishes themselves from their UK contemporaries better than “Snowden”, this album is easily their most successful in terms of accomplishing their strategy across an entire album.

Around the 2:15 mark of “Snowden” -- a perfectly balanced single in its arrangement -- the song seems about ready to hit its apex and take the listener up a notch on the intensity meter. However, when the guitar comes into relieve singer Jimi Goodwin’s repetitive lead in to this interlude, the result isn’t a U2-style blast of distortion, but the unnerving crackling of a dying amplifier tube burning out. The message is this: while so many other Brit rock bands aim for the moon and launch their songs with the kind of grandeur deserving of arenas and lighter-substituting-cell phones, Doves don’t operate with those same kind of pretentions, preferring instead to challenge the listener with something less sonically massive, but ultimately more rewarding.

There’s an old saying amongst baseball pitchers about ‘reaching back for a little less’ when they’re in a jam; meaning challenging the hitter’s expectations by throwing something offspeed rather than slaving to adrenaline and trying to blow a fastball by them. This is what Doves do with their songs. While their British brethren continually try to go bigger and bigger, when those song-defining moments arrive, Doves live by the adage ‘less is more.’

Now, this isn’t to say that there isn’t a lot going on with any Doves record. Kingdom of Rust is flush with the dense shoegaze-ish layering of sound that distinguishes the band and gives them their identity, as opposed to being pigeonholed to either Brit rock or indie rock no man’s land. Tracks like “The Greatest Denier” and “House of Mirrors” glisten with the kind of ambience that stoners claim they can see, while others such as “Birds Flew Backwards” bring a more focused approach to the type of down tempo songs that the band typically uses to break up their albums. Like the vaguely Zero 7-sounding track “The Storm” from Some Cities, “Birds Flew Backwards” provides some strings-laden reflection. “Compulsion” even has some Misfits-worthy vocal wails.

Opening track “Jetstream” is yet another foray into electronic dabbling for the band. It is vaguely reminiscent of something like Muse’s “Take a Bow”, the kickoff song for their last record, but, in characteristic Doves fashion, does not feature a similar moment of impact which takes a band like Muse into a prototypical soundtrack-to-the-apocalypse episode. Instead, “Jetstream” hints at a climax that never quite arrives, and while some may consider this a tease, Doves strings the listener along with such precision that they’re really just along for the ride. Any preconceived notions of what constitutes ‘dramatic’ rock music are (joyously) thrown out the window.

Much like Some Cities, Kingdom of Rust really is defined by a single track. Amazingly, both albums as wholes actually hold up to scrutiny, which really serves as a testament to how great Doves are at capturing their very best ideas. But on this album, that song is “Winter Hill”, somewhere in between the aforementioned “Words” and a faster-paced “No Surprises” by Radiohead; which is appropriate as this is one of two tracks on the album produced by John Leckie, who manned the knobs of landmark album The Bends. Not only does the song contain some of the loveliest melodies ever crafted by the band, but they are complemented by musicians finding a perfect harmony between ambience and focused clarity in their instrumentation and tones. Just as “Snowden” serves Some Cities, “Winter Hill” is not only the album’s most aesthetically pleasing song, but also its most flawlessly constructed.

Like so much of Doves career, Kingdom of Rust is highlighted by its shying away from overreaching to artificially produce that routinely Wal Mart-bought faux grandiosity. While this has probably prevented them from achieving the same level of notoriety acts like Coldplay, Snow Patrol, Travis, or the Gallaghers have enjoyed, it has (most of the time) also made them much more interesting to sit down and listen to. On this album, Doves have not only perfected ‘reaching back for a little less’, but have conversely learned how to keep this strategy more focused and less meandering. The result is something special. A lot of listeners may not appreciate the subtle changes in the band’s approach, and the less familiar may pass it off as ‘just indie rock’, but ultimately this record is going to be one of the most rewarding listens of 2009.

9/10