There’s naught more fraught than the comeback album. Despite the fact that Doves never officially broke up back in 2010 (their last appearances together were to promote the best of album The Places Between), the relief and excitement was palpable when they announced a series of gigs last year, and a new album felt inevitable.
The atmospheric opening to Carousels ably builds tension, with a shuffling drum-loop pilfered from the late, great Tony Allen and an overall hurdy-gurdy feel that befits the title. It’s vibrant and crisp, and as such sets the tone. Similarly, later on Mother Silver owes a debt to Afrobeat, all percussive energy and funk.
Back to the top, I Will Not Hide sustains the atmospheric start with swampy bass and the trademark guitar lines which form a structure around the melody. It was quite apparent when listening to the Jimi Goodwin solo and the Black Rivers albums (Jez and Andy Williams’ project) who contributed what to Doves, and the latter pair’s soundscapes sit better alongside Goodwin’s melancholy tones.
With a muffled guitar loop very reminiscent of Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Broken Eyes easily takes a place at the top table of Doves tracks, containing an earworm of a chorus with grandiose yet subtle strings. Despite clocking in at only four minutes, it has the feel of an epic. Meanwhile the toe-tapping For Tomorrow re-introduces the familiar Hacienda keys (Doves were once dance act Sub Sub, as if you didn’t know) alongside a McCartney bassline to create a new zenith in Northern wistfulness. The keys return on the title-track which, despite commencing as a piano ballad, progresses with a house groove, stuttering beat and some Chic-y (sorry) guitars for good measure whilst Goodwin laments about contemporary consumerism.
The subject matter is generally varied and often oblique (as it should be), but some themes stand out; recent single Prisoners tackles the subject of mental health (‘hello old friend, it’s been a while’) but contrasts it against pace and urgency, topped off with a guitar lick that almost seems offended to have to sustain the pace of everything else surrounding it. The anxious Cathedrals Of The Mind is the seemingly now-compulsory Bowie tribute, complete with moody saxophone, but once again can be interpreted as a paean to lost friendship (‘everywhere I see your eyes but you’re not there’) against a backdrop of stabbing synths. Cycle Of Hurt, despite in no way being a bad song, fails to stand out, largely as it contains guitar sounds too similar to its preceding track, but in isolation will likely become a favourite.
It’s probably fair to say that Doves’ peers have had mixed fortunes with albums released after a lengthy hiatus. If they can be counted as such, Blur and The Verve made decent fists of it, but even the most ardent fans wouldn’t claim either The Magic Whip or Forth hit the same heights as previously. The Libertines’ Anthems For Doomed Youth paled in comparison to their two generation-defining classics. Perhaps only Ride can categorically justify their return to the fray. They stand alone no more.
The Universal Want sits comfortably in Doves’ canon and, while we didn’t know we needed it, it’s arrival should be hotly, rather than warmly welcomed.