Doves
The Universal Want

It took a full eleven years for a new Doves album to finally arrive.

We parted ways with Jimi Goodwin and company after the excellent “Kingdom Of Rust," followed just a year later by the compilation “The Places Between," which seemed to mark the definitive end of an almost flawless artistic journey. Subsequently, Goodwin himself debuted as a solo artist in 2014, while the remaining members formed a new band, Black Rivers, releasing their debut just a year later.

After a series of concerts a year ago, Doves retreated into the studio and finally released this new “The Universal Want,” produced by the band itself along with Dan Austin and recorded across Macclesfield, Stockport, and Alcester. Comprising ten new tracks, the new work from the Mancunian band picks up exactly where we left off a decade ago, as if all this time had never passed.

Indeed, it is a quintessentially “Dovesian” record, in some instances looking back (as in “Cycle Of Hurt,” which seems to recall certain atmospheres of the unforgettable “Lost Souls,” or the new single “Broken Eyes,” which takes the most classic Doves and mingles them with the Smiths – see the finale, which blatantly recalls “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”) but mainly focuses on repositioning the Mancunian trio in a present quite different from that of eleven years ago.

“Carousels” opens the album exceptionally with a delightful sample of the late Tony Allen; the rhythmic setup of the track is fantastic, and it's no wonder this piece was chosen for the band’s return. And the rest of the album does not struggle to excite, from the electro-acoustic drive of the delightful “I Will Not Hide,” which features a perfectly fitting electric guitar solo, to the (declared) Bowie-inspired fascinations of the spectacular “Cathedrals Of The Mind” (which bridges with the previous “Kingdom Of Rust”), to a blatantly radio-friendly single - but with class - like “Prisoners.”

And so, even the trip-hop flair of “For Tomorrow” and the title track (between piano ballad and Hacienda style pulses, no wonder in their early career the Doves were called Sub Sub and made dance music) end up convincing.

A great comeback, doing justice to a band never celebrated enough.

Best track: Cathedrals Of The Mind