NAME: Doves
PROGRESS REPORT: Prepping their fourth album, Kingdom Of Rust, out April 6.
"We go into the studio and we tend to go in daily until we get somewhere, and that's either a really pleasant experience or a really torturous experience," Doves vocalist and bassist Jimi Goodwin says. And with four years between this record and 2005's Some Cities, you'd hope Doves had more of the former experience. But most of the intervening years were spent on all the stuff outside the band and the studio. "We took time off. [Drummer] Andy [Williams] had a baby in October of last year, so I think we took out six weeks then, and that was the longest hiatus we had for the record," Goodwin says. "When we go in and do stuff, it's roll your sleeves up and tank up your life for a while until its done. But sadly real life has a habit of poking its head in, with and lots of ups and downs." So recording wasn't relaxed, he says, but just broken up by all the other things band members had going on.
All of the recording was done in the band's converted Cheshire farmhouse studio, which sits on a working dairy farm. They began working at the farmhouse in 2006, mastering Kingdom Of Rust just over Christmas. "It's been a bit of a white-knuckle ride at times," he says. Though Goodwin met his bandmates, brothers Jez and Andy Williams, when they were in high school, they all work together like family now. "It's like that. We never argue but there's 'discussion,' let's just put it that way." Those discussions might have led to the varied sounds on Kingdom Of Rust, which doesn't seem to stay in one place, musically. "Jez said it's quite schizophrenic. But I think all our records are schizophrenic. We've always as a band been interested in tons of different stuff and we just try and bring all of that to the table and it goes through our filter," Goodwin says. "We're still moving as human beings." That motion carries through to the songs themselves, especially "Jetstream" and "10:03," which begins with the line "10:03 on a fast train," where and when the song was written. The album was mostly produced by Dan Austin, who's also worked with Massive Attack. John Leckie, who produced Radiohead's The Bends, also produced a handful of tracks for Kingdom Of Rust.
Goodwin says the band is eager to play the songs out more, though he's hoping audiences won't hear the songs and think they sound better live. One of their first workouts for Kingdom Of Rust was Heavenly Records' 19th anniversary party, at the World Festival Hall in London. Playing for their longtime label broke them out of the recording process. "It allowed us to burst out of that stupid bubble in a way," Goodwin says. "To just to go into a rehearsal room and literally make a cup of tea and strap on and plug in and just play your set for three hours every day, then go home and not discuss songs ... that was really great."
Kingdom Of Rust is due on 4/6. Here's a look at it shaping up:
More of those scenes from the studio at MySpace.
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