Doves' frontman Jimi Goodwin can't sing. His voice, often derided for its slovenliness and liberality with pitch, lends the Manchester trio's songs a coarseness for which they're left to compensate, or not, with more adventurous instrumentals. The band's previous albums, Lost Souls and The Last Broadcast, generally managed to cover the difference, but at times sounded like Doves were trying too hard to be something they're not: Both albums featured their share of anthemic hooks, but it seemed as if the band were struggling to turn in something as aseptically beatific-- and as popular-- as fellow Brit-rock bands such as Coldplay and Travis.
In the three years since Last Broadcast, Doves have cultivated a better understanding of their strengths and limitations, and Some Cities beams with a revivified looseness. Like its predecessors, the album arrives just in time for Spring and comes bearing more than a few certifiable vernal jams. Last Broadcast's "There Goes the Fear", one of the bouncin-est seven-minute verse/chorus/verse brit-rock epics with a jungle-percussive outro Radio 1 has ever spun, finds its match in "Black and White Town", this album's lead single, which channels Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out" with a plump four-on-the-floor beat and steady-struttin' piano line. But as tender and prissy as they can be, strands of angst and pessimism course through Doves' music, and Some Cities hones this aesthetic push-and-pull, featuring some of the band's darkest and prettiest music to date. Furthermore, those two stylistic extremes aren't always mutually exclusive.
The record's first four tracks are downright impregnable. Opener "Some Cities" is urgent and yearning. The song is surprisingly tactful in forging a composite order, wedding Bruce Springsteen's arena boot-stomp to the Velvet Underground's driveling, soot-caked guitar yowls. "Almost Forgot Myself" is more classic Motown than its rippling atmospherics and surf-echo guitar let on, laying down a rubbery bass line and sturdy boom-chick drumming. It's difficult to tell if "Snowden"'s deeply cooed, wordless chorus is the work of voice or oscillated guitar or both, but it's sure as hell beautiful.
Rounding out the chart-eyeing material is "One of These Days", which pegs the platinum-selling populism that has eluded the band. The guitar melody is Some Cities' most chipper, but the song is beefy with details-- a tangential doppler-synth intro and a tasteful effects-laden trim, among them. Again, the drum/bass interplay suggests a Motown affinity-- a dauntingly generic yet fickle ingredient that Doves incorporate pleasantly and organically.
It's frustrating when an album feels like it consciously has to embark on some kind of journey-- for instance, the descent from energetic, single-worthy material to slow introspective ballads that's so often just a cover for frontloading. Some Cities traces a similar arc, but Doves aren't pulling the wool over our eyes; the album's second half is nearly as well-executed as its first, if lacking the same galvanizing momentum. "Shadows of Salford" is a muffled, herb-slowed piano dirge that sends Magical Mystery Tour its regards. From there, the album acquiesces, staking one last bopper ("Sky Starts Falling") before bowing out gracefully with the huge, sweeping "Ambition", a dignified snares-off dirge. Like many great brit-rock records, Some Cities is plucky and resilient-- it wants badly to show you its hurt but wouldn't dare spill its guts straight; that would be impudent. Doves know better: They hold their breath to the end, until, wheezing and transparent, their hearts shine clear.
