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Bowery Ballroom, New York February 28, 2001 By C. Bottomley The omens were not good. The last English band to come through these parts was Coldplay, and their aborted debut a week earlier was the chatter of those gathered to see the Doves. Then there's the matter of their album Lost Souls. Having survived a fire that burned down their studio and having suffered the death of manager Rob Gretton, the trio known as the Doves probably wished they were Sub Sub again, the dance unit whose 1995 club hit "Ain't No Love (Ain't No Use)" was the windfall that bought them a mixing desk in the first place. Instead, they continued to labor at Lost Souls, and we'll be kind by affording it "promising" status. The songs feel like they had been fussed over to death, then reduced in the final mix to bare skeletons - with guitars echoing in empty sockets. When the Doves get it right, like on "The Cedar Room," the music feels as warm as a hug when your eyes are red and the pubs have all closed. But in general the disc's downbeat mood was a few copies of Q ahead of the Great Radiohead '97 Revival (Coldplay, Muse, et al.). And having New York's current coolest Lou Reed/Stooges/MC5 amalgam, the Strokes, open for them was tempting fate. How wrong we were. When the band left a bluesy "Albatross"-style lick hanging in the air on the opening instrumental, "Firesuite," the audience took it as their cue to applaud the pauses. Aided by a keyboardist/tape manipulator, what the Doves really excelled at was making an almighty atmosphere that had rock scribes reaching for copies of Spin for a crash course in how to properly use terms like "skyscraping" and "Slowdive." Sonic cathedrals of sound never sounded more welcome. Guitarist Jez Williams needed an extra leg to work all the pedals at his command, but drummer Andy Williams kept a beat as if Kitaro were his sensei. "Catch the Sun" was the Doves at their most direct, using England's weeklong summer as a metaphor for making hay before the Popsicles melt. The band used it as a chance to show off its roots, revealing elements from 808 State's electronica classic "Pacific State" and a "Tomorrow Never Knows" drum loop. Here's to Ringo. Like so many rain-soaked Lancashire bands before them (the Smiths, the Verve, even Oasis to a degree), the Doves understand that sometimes the boudoir is the most formidable stage on which we strut. So on "The Man Who Told Everything" and "The Cedar Room," Jimi Goodwin's only view was that of the ceiling - at least he had some gorgeous tunes for company. Having instinctively beefed up their songs, the Doves have become a rather special entity. If they didn't know it already, they did after Lost Soul's closing ballad, "A House." The song was played from their gut, and it closed to the audience's stunned silence. "You can hear a fookin' pin drop in here," muttered Goodwin. "What happened to yas?" Lost in music, mate. Lost in music. |
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