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Sep 11, 2020 By Christopher Roberts Photography by Jon Shard Doves

Manchester-based trio Doves have released their long-awaited fifth album, The Universal Want, today on Imperial. Now they have shared a video for the album’s “Broken Eyes,” a song not shared prior to the release of the album. Now that the album’s out you can stream the whole thing below. Also, yesterday we posted our review of the album and our interview with the band’s Jimi Goodwin.

The Universal Want is the band’s first album in 11 years. Colin Read directed the “Broken Eyes” video.

The band’s Andy Williams had this to say about “Broken Eyes” in a press release: “We nailed it amidst the enthusiasm of first playing together again. You can overthink and overcomplicate things, but sometimes need to step back and say ‘that’s the heart of the song, right there.’ The rest of The Universal Want has got more eclectic and allows a song as immediate as ‘Broken Eyes’ to be on there.”

Goodwin adds: “It’s like a Ray Davies tune. Our version of something from The Village Green Preservation Society, but the four-chord cycle also goes back to our beginnings and ‘Catch The Sun.’ It’s a bittersweet song, connecting with the way we perceive people, but also ourselves and our anxieties.”

In June the band shared the album’s first single, “Carousels,” which was their first new song in 11 years. “Carousels” made it to #1 on our Songs of the Week list. When the album was announced they shared its second single, “Prisoners,” via a music video for it. “Prisoners” was #2 on our Songs of the Week list. Then they shared a remix of “Carousels” done by The Comet Is Coming, the London based Nu Jazz trio. Then Doves shared the sheet music and lyrics from the album’s closing track, “Forest House,” with the intention that fans and other musicians alike would try and play the song and then post it online using #doveleaks. The band shared one final pre-release single, “Cathedrals of the Mind,” via a trippy video for it. “Cathedrals of the Mind” was also one of our Songs of the Week.

Doves’ last album was 2009’s Kingdom of Rust, which was their fourth. The band went on an “indefinite pause” in 2010, but announced their reunion in 2018 and played their first reunion show in March 2019, to benefit Teenage Cancer Trust. Other live shows followed, along with promises of new music.

Of the album as a whole, the band’s Jez Williams had this to say: “It’s definitely got the stamp of ‘the time’ all over it. Everything on the album is an echo. It’s an echo of what we were going through at the time. Getting back together, the Royal Albert Hall and everything else.”

The album’s artwork is by London-based, Finnish photographer, Maria Lax. Goodwin was taken by her 2020 photobook, Some Kind of Heavenly Fire, and gifted a copy to each of his bandmates. The press release says the book “set evocative images alongside memorabilia relating to a moment in time when hardship, industrialization and UFO sightings disturbed the peace of her isolated hometown in Northern Finland.”

Doves have released four albums: 2000’s Lost Souls, 2002’s The Last Broadcast, 2005’s Some Cities, and 2009’s Kingdom of Rust. Since their hiatus, frontman Jimi Goodwin released a solo album, Odludek, in 2014. That same year, Doves’ other two members, brothers Jez and Andy Williams, formed the new band Black Rivers (they released their debut album in 2015).

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