1 They formed as a deliberate irritant The trio of Alan Sparhawk. Mimi Parker and Zak Sally from Duluth. Minnesota set abOut forming a band a decade ago as an experiment in playing as quietly. carefully and slowly as i’iossible to irritate dumbass alternative rockers in their home town. It werked. AuspiCIous beginnings.
2 For the kids Sparhawk. who sings and plays guitar. and Mimi Parker. who Sings and plays drums. met in fourth grade and have been married for 13 years. They have two children. Hours and Cyrus. Rather oddly Zak Sally. the band's bassist. was present at the births. Damn, this hand are close. Anyway. go and see them and put some pennies in their pockets. cos those kids won't feed and clothe themselves. you know?
3 Harmonies from heaven Sparhawk and Parker's voices are simply divine. Combined With the band 's Spare. pensive arrangements and the audience's awed hush it makes for a quasi- religious mt sical experience. Trust us. Having said that. new album The Great Destroyer sees them cranking up the guitar distortion for the first time. so maybe this tour will be Low in raaaaawk mode. Then again. maybe not.
4 They’re Mormons This has nothing to do With Low's music. but all three of the band are practising Mormons. That doesn't mean they have two heads or anything. The only other Mormon band we can think of is the Osmonds. Low are the anti— Osmonds in so many ways.
5 They’re miserable but funny It‘s a black, black world. Low-world. But it's also a laugh. With eight wonderfully creepy albums under their belts. there are dozens of songs chock full of death imagery. yet Sparhawk often cracks jokes between tunes when they play live. They run their own label called Chairkickers' Union Mus:c after an early song 'Rope': ‘You're gonna need more / Don't ask me to kick any chairs out from under you'. Ho. ho. ho. (DOng Johnstone)
:‘ OMU. Glasgow. Fri 25 Feb: Queen's Hall. Edinburgh, Sat 26 Feb.
72 THE LIST ’ ‘ i-I:
odves Corn Exchange. Edinburgh, Tue 22 Feb: Carling Academy, Glasgow. Thu 24 Feb
Thank God. While every other indie band in Britain is copying either Franz Ferdinand or Coldplay, sing hosanna for the return of Doves. The Mancunian threesome re-enter our atmosphere this month with their third album, Some Cities, and a wonderfully distinctive and individual record it is too.
Eschewing the epic, orchestral romps of 2002‘s The Last Broadcast, Jimi Goodwin and pals have this time hit us with a record totally out of step with the prevailing indie climate. It‘s one that is equally in debt to the struts and rhythms of Motown and Northern Soul as it is to creepy film soundtracks of the 705. Throughout its 11 tracks there is a simmering tension, 3 claustrophobic feeling that can only come from urban Britain in the 21st century.
‘Tracks like “Snowden”, they‘ve got a barely containable energy, an irrepressible energy, a pressure cooker vibe going on,‘ says Goodwin jovially. ‘And on the title track it sounds like it‘s struggling to contain all the ideas and all the thoughts that we put in.‘
Goodwin is excited about the new record and rightly so. Even on its most commercial moments, like the
iiiiARTm KERSHAW PLAYS CHARLIE PARKER Henry's Jazz Cellar, Edinburgh, Fri 25 Feb
fantastically wonky “Heatwave-vibe of single 'Black and White Town‘, there is something distinctive and individual about Doves‘ new sound, something which is part deliberate, part instinctive.
‘I could rattle on about how we consciously didn‘t want to repeat ourselves, and there's some truth in that,‘ says Goodwin. ‘Early doors we did have a tentative talk about where this one might lead, but when you do that, often as not you‘re dead wrong. With Some Cities it was written entirely in the rehearsal room, so it‘s very much coming from a collective place, as opposed to the last two where individual songs were put forward by people. All of the songs rose from the ground up together, really.‘
The album was partly recorded in the Highlands in an old Victorian schoolhouse in Fort Augustus. It seems an odd location in which to be recording songs about urban paranoia, but Goodwin reckons that was to the record‘s benefit
‘There are songs on the album that have an urban theme, and I don't know why but being in the country brought that into focus,‘ he says. ‘There was something about being away that helped us focus; there were no distractions. Plus, the Highlands will rival anywhere in world for natural beauty. It was breathtaking.‘
A word that can equally be applied to Doves.
(Doug Johnstone)