Some Cities is the third studio album by the British indie rock band Doves. The album was released by Heavenly Recordings on 21 February 2005, and became the band's second consecutive album to top the UK Albums Chart at number 1. Some Cities was conceived as a rawer, stripped-down record, and conceptually touches upon the physical changes of the band's hometown of Manchester, as well as emotional transformations.
The album features the band's second-highest charting single, "Black and White Town", which peaked at number 6 on the UK Singles Chart. Two further singles from the album—"Snowden" and "Sky Starts Falling"—also fared moderately well on the chart, peaking at number 17 and 45, respectively.
Background and recording
After the worldwide success of Doves' second album The Last Broadcast, Jez Williams recalled, in a 2010 interview with Under the Radar following the release of the band's compilation album The Places Between: The Best of Doves, that the band decided to take a more "stripped-down" approach to recording Some Cities, which included decamping to rural locations in England, Scotland, and Wales. "With [Some Cities] we were also wanting to make a few social comments about the area we lived in. There's a lot of subject matter on that album dealing with change. Buildings get ripped down and replaced by more generic ones. It kind of gave ourselves a bit of purpose to write about it. We also listened to a lot of Motown and Northern soul, and I think that came out in that album. It was a definite change. Our albums do tend to change character and personality with every release."[1]
Initially, the band set out to record their third album with producer William Orbit. In a February 2005 interview with The Irish Times, vocalist/bassist Jimi Goodwin said, "Jeff Barrett from our label, Heavenly, suggested we work with William and we were fine with that, we're always up for trying new stuff. But I think we expected too much from him. He was happy just to be in the studio with us because he hadn't worked with a band since Blur. His point was he was just recording what he was hearing. He wasn't doing anything that we wouldn't do ourselves normally and we put a lot of pressure on him almost to subvert us. He's a top guy, but it just didn't work."[2] The band subsequently co-produced Some Cities with Ben Hillier, who also mixed the album (except for "Some Cities" and "Walk in Fire", which were mixed by Rich Costey). Much of the recording occurred at a farmhouse in the English countryside over the course of 2004, except for closing track "Ambition", which was recorded in an empty Benedictine monastery in Scotland, which the band had found while doing a photo shoot for the album. The huge reverb effect was achieved using the acoustics of the main hall. The recording process is shown in the mini-documentary Cities Under Construction, featured on the bonus DVD included with the special edition of the album.
In a 2010 interview with Spinner.com, Jimi Goodwin stated, "I look back fondly at the Some Cities period, going to this old schoolhouse in Scotland with Ben Nevis out the window. I spent six weeks up there and didn't want to come home; my mum had just died and I just wanted to be away."[3]
Release
Some Cities was released in the United Kingdom on 21 February 2005, where it entered the UK Albums Chart at number 1.[4] The album was released on several different formats in the UK: the standard CD and double 12" vinyl LP, and also as a special edition with a bonus DVD containing a short documentary entitled Cities Under Construction, featuring the making of the album inside a purple-coloured digipak.[5] In addition, a limited edition version, packaged inside a hessian cloth-covered box with fold-out poster and bonus DVD, was also released.[6] The album was released in Japan on 23 February 2005 and included two bonus tracks, "Eleven Miles Out" and "At the Tower" (which had been released as B-sides to "Black and White Town"). On 1 March 2005, the album was released in North America by Capitol Records.
In late December 2004, the album's first single "Black and White Town" was issued to radio stations; two weeks prior to the album's release, the single was released commercially and entered the UK Singles Chart at number 6,[4] the band's second-highest charting single to date. In May 2005, the album's second single "Snowden" was released and peaked at number 17.[4] The third and final single "Sky Starts Falling" was released in September 2005 and peaked at number 45.[4] Throughout 2005, Doves rigorously toured the world, including England, the United States, and Australia;[7] in April 2006, a special download-only EP entitled Some Cities Live EP, featuring select recordings from various dates on the Some Cities tour, was released to online digital outlets.
Some Cities was released to generally positive reviews. Drowned in Sound awarded the album a 9 out of 10 rating, saying, "Though it may be gentle and frequently maudlin, it is no doubt a release to spend 50 minutes with this record. Some Cities may not be a summer record, but it might quite possibly be the record that gets you through it."[10]MusicOMH praised the album, calling it "an ethereal outpouring of emotion; melancholic madness meeting soul-soaring serendipity head on," and noted that, "Gone is the prog-like polished production of The Last Broadcast, it's more akin to debut Lost Souls in timbre. Yet while those were records that sounded like they were conceived in wide open countryside or of the rolling sea this is an ode to the industrial heartland of their childhood; at turns crunching and urban, desolate and apocalyptic."[18]Pitchfork Media gave Some Cities a 7.8 out of 10 rating, and concluded that, "In the three years since Last Broadcast, Doves have cultivated a better understanding of their strengths and limitations, and Some Cities beams with a revivified looseness."[13]
