In satellite towns there's no colour and no sound

Continuing my trip back through the 2005 album charts.

27/02/05 : Some Cities - Doves

Our third visit with Doves, who I quite like when I remember they exist and this is one of theirs I own - but I can't have listened to it in at least fifteen years, so I'm looking forward to revisiting it.

Yeah, I liked this - it's jangly guitars which I always go for.  I can understand that some might say it's a bit samey and some might complain about the singing, but it all works well enough for me.  It feels like the lyrics probably have a lot to say but they stayed just out of reach for me on this listen - probably because I was just enjoying the tunes.  I particularly like "Black And White Town", "One Of These Days" and "Ambition", but it's all pretty decent if you're in the mood for that sort of thing.  I'm also intrigued as to what's happening on the album cover...

We're at #1 with a new entry in the chart this week on their start of a fifteen week run, which feels pretty decent from the lads.  The rest of the top five were Scissor Sisters, Keane, The Killers (can you believe we've yet to meet Hot Fuss?) and Green Day (which is quite the turn around from the absolutely dreadful top five we saw last time out) and the next highest new entry is a Tony Christie best-of (#10).

Wikipedia has a surprising amount on the album, telling me it's their third (and second #1) studio album.  It was originally planned to be produced by William Orbit and they started working together, but the sessions didn't go so well because the band expected William to challenge them and William was quite happy to just press record on the tape player (I might possibly be being simplistic here!).  It also tells us that "Ambition" was recorded in an empty Benedictine monastery that they only saw when they were doing artwork for the album and the album was also released in a limited edition hessian sack version - who doesn't want one of them?  The critics were nice enough it and whilst it didn't set the world alight commercially, I was surprised to see it had done as well as #111 in the US.

"Customers also listened to" Turin Brakes, Badly Drawn Boy, The Coral and Editors - I totally understand they're not for everyone but there's no doubting the skill involved in all parties there.  As is also true for Doves - I do kinda forget about them but I always enjoy it when I bump into them at moments such as this.

20/02/05 - One of the finest first halves out there
06/03/05 - Good in places, annoying in others

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