Defining a Decade: Doves The Last Broadcast (2002)

The cornerstone of my record collection has always been British indie bands.  A once-over of my shelves gives you a capsulized history of the last 30 odd years of English music:  Bowie, T.Rex, The Smiths, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Stone Roses, The Charlatans, The Beautiful South, Suede, Blur, The Chemical Brothers, Travis, Badly Drawn Boy, Belle & Sebastian, Radiohead, Saint Etienne, Elbow…. Somewhere in the timeline between Britpop and the Radiohead revolution is Doves.

For the uninitiated, Doves is the trio of Jez Williams, his twin brother Andy Williams, and Jimi Goodwin, who first started recording together under the name Sub Sub in 1989, scoring a couple of UK chart singles as a dance act.  In 1996, their recording studio was destroyed in a fire, and the band decided that they would rise out of the ashes in a new incarnation, under a new name.  The chose Doves as their moniker, perhaps as a mixed allegory for a phoenix rising from the pyre and the biblical symbol that the tumultuous time of the flood was over.  Their first record under a new name, Lost Souls, got lumped together with a mass of new bands emerging in a post-Britpop world.  There was less flag waving and tongue wagging, and more introspection and melancholic melody.  Somewhere in my mother’s basement there’s an issue of Select magazine (most likely one of its last) that asks, “Who will be the next Radiohead?” and places odds on whether Coldplay, Elbow, Turin Brakes (remember them?) or Doves will make it.

We know how that horse race turned out now, but before Coldplay released A Rush of Blood to the Head in August 2002 (an album I strongly considered for this list, by the way) there was The Last Broadcast in April of that same year.  If either band were entertaining notions of becoming the next U2, these two records were certainly the ones that would put them on the road to shows at Red Rocks, but where Rush of Blood… and The Last Broadcast differ is not on their trajectory, but on the impact of their landing.  I dare anyone to listen to “There Goes the Fear”–all 6:54 of it–and not feel the sky opening up, the sunlight breaking through, and their hearts filled with something–anything: joy, trepidation, anticipation, nervousness, regret.  “Pounding” is relentless in the way its passion and desperation drives into your emotional core:  “it’s now or never baby/We don’t mind/If this don’t last forever/See the light/But it won’t last forever/Seize the time/Cause it’s now or never baby”.

For a few short months in the UK music press, it seemed a foregone conclusion that Doves were going to claim the throne of indie rock royalty, and by all rights it should have been theirs.  A quick comparative visit to Metacrtic will show you that The Last Broadcast edges out Rush of Blood… 85 to 80 (the difference between “Universal acclaim” and “Generally favourable reviews”).  Success in the U.S eluded Doves, while Coldplay had it thrust upon them.  Blame it on America and a post 9/11 world.  They just weren’t quite ready to let the sunshine in yet.

Naysayers may say that the album wanes a bit in its second half, and I’d agree that it’s a top heavy record, but by the time “Caught By the River” rolls around to close it out, Doves are back on form and coming full circle from where they started.  I may get some heat for its inclusion as an album that defined the decade for me, but when I think about anthemic, stadium-sized British rock records of the 2000s, my list looks like this:  The Last Broadcast, Elbow’s The Seldom Seen Kid, and then A Rush of  Blood to the Head. Coldplay may have got the girl and the glory, but in my books, Doves get the gold.

MP3: Doves “There Goes the Fear”
Myspace: Doves

2 Comments so far
Leave a comment





Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Name (required)

E-mail (required)

URI

Your Comment