Jackson Free Press

Capitol Records will release Doves' Some Cities, the long-awaited follow-up to the British trio's epic 2002 breakthrough album The Last Broadcast, in the U.S. on March 1st. If the first two Doves albums, Lost Souls (2000) and The Last Broadcast (2002), were records that sounded like they were conceived in vast open spaces, each song a snapshot of celestial heights, wide open countryside or rolling seas, third album Some Cities paints a more intimate picture altogether.

At points it's gritty and urban, sounding like a midnight joyride through the industrial beating heart of the band's Manchester hometown (most noticeably on high-throttle lead single "Black & White Town"). At others it's starkly personal, like a lament overheard in a confessional ("Walk in Fire," "Almost Forgot Myself.") But Some Cities feels very much like its Northern England birthplace, and is the sound of Doves at their most relaxed and confident.

Conceived as a more concise and direct record than its predecessors, Some Cities was written primarily in remote cottages and holiday rentals around the UK and recorded with Ben Hiller (producer of Blur's Think Tank and Elbow's Cast of Thousands) in Liverpool, Brixton and Loch Ness. It was inspired initially by the profound changes the band saw in Manchester each time they returned home from touring, and musically by hobbyist DJ sets where the band would move from town to town playing an affectionately ramshackle selection of Northern Soul and acid house.

Some Cities evokes the changing face of Doves' corner of the world, in the inner-city texture running through the album, nowhere more so than on the title track with its huge, backbreaking rumble of drums sounding like heavy machinery being forcefully dismantled (and a fractured guitar line not out of place on an early Fall album); "Shadows of Salford" sounds like a ghostly lullaby crackling through a lobby intercom; "One of These Days" and "Sky Starts Falling" speed by as if from passing cars on slick city streets and closing ballad "Ambition" watches the sun slowly rise from a tenth-story window as the city below comes to life (even as it was recorded in a disused Scottish monastery).

But Some Cities does still float away from its detailed urban landscape for the celestial -- "Someday Soon" is all acoustic guitars swooping and diving in waltz time as a heavenly flute loop flutters about in time, "The Storm" is a rolling piano and symphonic piece described by frontman Jimi Goodwin as sounding "like hotwiring a massive orchestra up to a transistor radio." And the grand, sweeping "Snowden" is clearly inspired by the big, beautiful Welsh mountain that bears its name.

DOVES, SOME CITIES

1. Some Cities
2. Black & White Town
3. Almost Forgot Myself
4. Snowden
5. The Storm
6. Walk in Fire
7. One of These Days
8. Someday Soon
9. Shadows of Salford
10. Sky Starts Falling
11. Ambition