Artist: Doves
Album: Kingdom Of Rust
Year: 2009
Grade: 1.5 pretzels
It doesn’t seem like a month can go by without one album or another reminding me why I’ve grown so frustrated with Brindie rock (for a full definition, see my previous post). Again and again, I keep finding these albums by British bands who seem to be locked into a rigid, unmoving formula. This month’s casualty is Doves and their Kingdom Of Rust album, another futile exercise in processed drama and unnecessarily widescreen epics.
Doves haven’t always sounded this dull. Way back, towards the beginning of this decade, they released some very lovely, shimmery albums of Britpop. They seemed to represent the breezier, dreamier end of the Brit-rock spectrum. They had their own identity. However, with Kingdom Of Rust, they’ve essentially thrown that all away, instead deciding that the route to success requires them to sound exactly like every other band in England. Songs like “Jetstream” sound like something Coldplay might have written and then forgotten about. If Doves only have the ambition to write Coldplay b-sides, they need to get their priorities in life straight.
The thing the hurts Kingdom Of Rust the most is the lack of memorable melodies. The band has always had a solid grasp of atmosphere and mood, with Kingdom Of Rust being no exception. However, all that means little if there isn’t a good tune to build around. For all of its strange bombast, a song like “The Outsiders” would never get stuck in my head after I turned it off. It sounds like the band spent too much time making the album sound “interesting” than making their songs sound “good.” The only moment when the album does work (the lead single “Kingdom Of Rust”), it’s because the band finally figures out how to throw a nice melody into the mix.
That brings me to the other big problem with this album: it sounds like it was recorded by four different bands. There’s nothing tying the gentle title track to the aforementioned “Jetstream”, or to the unexpected and mind-boggling funk bass on “Compulsion”. These songs do not sound like the work of a cohesive recording session. They sound like various outtakes the band have recorded over the past ten years, thrown together just to put more material out into the market. I’m sure that’s not what Doves actually did, but the fact that it sounds that way is not a good sign. In fact, if anything, it's worse. The band sounds lost, grasping at straws in an attempt to rediscover some kind of artistic spark. However, ripping off their more popular peers in the meantime is unacceptable.
Doves haven’t always sounded this dull. Way back, towards the beginning of this decade, they released some very lovely, shimmery albums of Britpop. They seemed to represent the breezier, dreamier end of the Brit-rock spectrum. They had their own identity. However, with Kingdom Of Rust, they’ve essentially thrown that all away, instead deciding that the route to success requires them to sound exactly like every other band in England. Songs like “Jetstream” sound like something Coldplay might have written and then forgotten about. If Doves only have the ambition to write Coldplay b-sides, they need to get their priorities in life straight.
The thing the hurts Kingdom Of Rust the most is the lack of memorable melodies. The band has always had a solid grasp of atmosphere and mood, with Kingdom Of Rust being no exception. However, all that means little if there isn’t a good tune to build around. For all of its strange bombast, a song like “The Outsiders” would never get stuck in my head after I turned it off. It sounds like the band spent too much time making the album sound “interesting” than making their songs sound “good.” The only moment when the album does work (the lead single “Kingdom Of Rust”), it’s because the band finally figures out how to throw a nice melody into the mix.
That brings me to the other big problem with this album: it sounds like it was recorded by four different bands. There’s nothing tying the gentle title track to the aforementioned “Jetstream”, or to the unexpected and mind-boggling funk bass on “Compulsion”. These songs do not sound like the work of a cohesive recording session. They sound like various outtakes the band have recorded over the past ten years, thrown together just to put more material out into the market. I’m sure that’s not what Doves actually did, but the fact that it sounds that way is not a good sign. In fact, if anything, it's worse. The band sounds lost, grasping at straws in an attempt to rediscover some kind of artistic spark. However, ripping off their more popular peers in the meantime is unacceptable.
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