Too Many Lost Souls

Doves and how their Mancunian melancholia sound tracked a life

Imagine, if you will, that you're in a city (preferably Manchester but any will do) and it's winter, cold and dark, around five pm. The traffic lights take on a distinct and weird hue as the chill seeps into your bones. The streets are full of people marching heads down and fists in pockets home or to the pub after work and as you think about the warmth of home and your tea in the oven your mind starts playing a song. The perfect soundtrack to this moment would be something by Doves.

Serendipity 1 (Circa 2000)

I ended up walking out of a nightclub I was only in to appease work colleagues when the DJ points out the film crew. 'Remember girls, the more flesh you show the more you'll be on screen'. I'm in no mood for sexist bullshit and depart with my pint unfinished. On the way home a get talking to a beautiful girl outside the pizza parlor, who tells me that Radiohead are the best band around. I politely disagree. She asks me who can even come close to them, to which I reply Doves. She seems unconvinced. I few weeks later I bump into her at a Doves gig in Wolverhampton and we exchange numbers. We go on to start an incredibly passionate, serious and ultimately doomed little love affair. It will remain the closest my life has been to being a French film.

I first heard Doves on the Steve Lamacq show around 1999 when he said something about the guys from Sub Sub forming a new band and played a track called the Cedar Room. It was love at first listen and the band have sound tracked my life from that moment. It's still a classic, brooding and almost painfully melancholic. Spooky but beautiful, haunting almost. Doves tend to get unfairly lumped into the Gazelle and bucket hat bracket of indie, but they offer so much more. Lost Souls, their first album reminds me of Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division insomuch that it's a soundtrack to urban living and could have been designed to listen to through headphones whilst roaming the city alone. Take Firesuite for example, a song that serves as an introduction to Lost Souls. It's spacey, echo-y jam that sprawls and loops around before dropping into something that sounds like a Twilight Zone incidental sound bite Or Sea Song, which almost serves as an onomatopoeia as it bubbles and flows in waves. It's a soundtrack to a thousand lives and serves as a light house to those drowning in their own existence.

Serendipity 2 (Circa 2002)

Incredibly, Doves are in Shrewsbury. Well, just Jimi, but there he is in The Buttermarket cellars in that famous small check shirt spinning loads of New Order.. We can't quite believe it. My mate offers him a go on a joint which he politely declines. I get a CD signed between him cueing records, he's cool and polite and lovely. Another mate wants an autograph too, but has no paper, the best he can manage is a Boots receipt for a beauty cream he got for his girlfriend. Duly, he presents said receipt and a pen to Jimi, who inspects it thoroughly. “Are you taking the piss mate?” he laughs.

2002's The Last Broadcast album sees the band take a slightly more commercial turn, the singles Pounding and There Goes the Fear get plenty of radio play and end up on pretty much every indie compilation released that year. Though it takes a only a little digging to find real beauty. Satellites is a truly gorgeous song, a baby sister to Cedar Room, and is a poem to letting toxic masculinity slip away. It twinkles and shines. Caught By the River is a plea to someone losing their will to hold on just that little bit tighter and concludes in fairground ride swirl of sound.

The Some Cities album (2005) is soundtrack to a shifting urban landscape. It has the thump and glide of Northern Soul pumping through it's veins, especially in the title track and single Black and White Town, harking back to the days of dancing away ones frustrations. Again, a little digging reveals true gold, and arguably the bands most beautiful song Ambition, a reverb heavy soak of Mancunian melancholy. ' Ain't a love as perfect/Everybody knows it' croons Jimi, breaking hearts like dinner plates. It's like a cross between Well I Wonder by the Smiths and a cathedral.

Kingdom of Rust sees the band maturing (a terrible, horrible description but sadly apt) into different soundtrack avenues and possibilities.

Serendipity 3 (Circa 2002)

It's around 3pm and me and Clarke (he of the boots receipt) are in Dry Bar Manchester enjoying a post record shopping pint of Red Stripe. The place has a few day drinkers in, look, isn't that the drummer from the Inspiral Carpets? The crack seems to be that the boss is out and the young lad left in charge is trying to impress a lass. There's a DJ booth and the lad in charge is playing an Inspirals b-side (“pure jazz that” says the clearly impressed drummer “pure jazz”). I cheekily ask him if he'll play a record I've just bought, some remix I'll never play again. “Help yourself” he says, returning to chatting up the lass “There's a bag of records and headphones there. Go for it”

It takes a while to work out how to get the sound in the headphones and not the speakers but after I get it I'm away and play for an hour. It's the first time I've DJ'd ever but the bag has a good selection and I spin everything from The Supremes to Public Enemy (“no one plays that round here” says an impressed punter “no one”). I play the 10” of There Goes the Fear and it's the absolute perfect soundtrack to being half pissed in Manchester at half four of an afternoon. “Total E tune this” reckons the lad in charge “Pure E”. It takes me a while to get his meaning but he's right. As we leave to catch our train he thanks me, slips me a fiver and returns to the lass. “Good set that man, bring your own tunes next time, that was alright that”. I buy a second hand pair of decks a month later, and do indeed return to Manchester to DJ with my own box of records, but that will take me another twenty years.

Possibly their most life saving record, The Universal Want was finished a week before the first lockdown was introduced to the UK and was released five months into those dark and weird times and served as a life raft to many trying to come to terms with the strangeness and loneliness of house arrest . To my ears, it's their finest work. The songs dive unexpectedly into infectiously different and sophisticated melodies and hooks. The song Prisoners recorded pre-epidemic would be a lockdown anthem to many, me included and songs like Broken Eyes, Cathedrals of the Mind and particularly Cycle of Hurt hint, at least lyrically, to a break down of mental stability. It's a wonderful album, as cathartic as it is catchy, but perhaps unsurprisingly considering it's content saw singer Jimi Goodwin withdraw from performing live due to personal mental health reasons. A statement from Jimi from the time of the cancelled 2002 tour read “One should never apologise for having issues with their mental health, but I do want to say sorry to all that have bought tickets. I’m truly grateful for the patience, love and understanding of my brothers Andy, Jez and Rebelski.”

Fast forward to 2024, and after releasing the amazing single Renegades ('And you ask yourself are you living in a dream? Piccadilly gardens selling dreams on giant screens') the band announce a new album 'Constellations For the Lonely' (due to be released Valentines Day 2025) and new tour, though sadly without Jimi, who whilst is doing well battling addiction and demons, isn't quite well enough to tour. Sobriety and recovery are absolutely paramount, especially with a family, and I wish Jimi all they very very best in his journey and look forward to seeing Doves live again. He and Doves deserve all our love and support. They have literally sound tracked my life, their music has made my soul and many others a little less lost and patience and understanding is the least we can offer. Here's to them sound tracking the next twenty five years of my life.