Doves - After a long hiatus, time to get re-acquainted.
Doves – Live At Maida Vale – 2000 – Past Daily Soundbooth
Doves – Live from Maida Vale – recorded for Steve Lamacq – December 18, 2000 – BBC Radio 1 –
Doves in concert for mid-week. Recorded for the Steve Lamacq program at BBC Radio 1 on December 18, 2000.
Doves are an indie rock band from Cheshire, England. The band is composed of twin brothers Jez Williams (guitar, vocals) and Andy Williams (drums, vocals), and Jimi Goodwin (bass, vocals, guitar). Additionally, the band employs Martin Rebelski, as a touring and session musician on keyboards. The band released four studio albums, two of which have reached Number One on the UK album charts. Their first career-spanning compilation album The Places Between: The Best of Doves was released in April 2010.
The formation of Doves can be traced back to when the Williams brothers and Goodwin met at Wilmslow High School at age 15. All three members played in various local bands during the timeframe, with their paths occasionally crossing. After meeting again at The Haçienda in 1989, the Williams brothers and Jimi Goodwin formed Sub Sub, releasing their first single “Space Face” in 1991, and then in 1993 they released “Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use),” which reached No. 3 in the UK Singles Chart. On the Williams twins’ birthday in February 1996, the band’s Ancoats studio caught fire and burned down, leading the band members to abandon their previous dance-oriented style and start afresh as alternative rock band Doves in 1998. On the band’s change of direction, Jez Williams said: “We were faced with a really black and white decision: throw the towel in or carry on. And if you’re going to carry on, you’ve got to put everything into it to justify it, because before that you’ve lost everything. That was quite a liberating feeling, actually.”
The band took a break from recording in 2010, according to an interview with The Daily Record Jimi Goodwin stated: “It’s nice just to have a bit of breathing space… We just wanted to get off that whole album-tour-album-tour treadmill. None of us are ready to face going into the studio for another two years. This is wiping the slate clean, we have nothing else in the vaults now. That is it. Whatever we do from now on will be a new start.”
On 2 October 2012, EMI International released a Doves anthology titled 5 Album Set featuring all four studio albums from Lost Souls to Kingdom of Rust and the 2003 re-issue of Lost Sides.
In March 2014, Jimi Goodwin released his first solo album, entitled Odludek. In July 2014, Jez and Andy Williams announced they formed a new band, Black Rivers.
In the beginning of 2018, as the two-year hiatus became nine, an ongoing online petition was created by fans aiming to encourage the band to reform. At the end of 2018 the band members announced a series of gigs for 2019 and a tentative plan to explore new music together. As the series neared conclusion, Doves posted on Facebook that the August 31, 2019 and September 6, 2019 shows will be the last 2 concerts until they have completed their next album, commenting they do not know how long that will be.
So, in case you missed them the first time around, or just miss hearing them, here is their gig at Maida Vale from December 18, 2000 – Crank it up.
