Lost Souls (Doves album)

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"It would be hindsight to wonder what the reaction would have been if we'd have released Lost Souls in 1996. I'm glad it wasn't ready. I wasn't even singing in 1996. I was conveying ideas, but it wasn't a unified decision, like, 'Jimi, you should do it, because we're getting nowhere auditioning singers.' That was a bit later, that was around 1997, maybe even 1998. We were frustrated, though, we wanted it out. ... It's totally different to your Blur and your Oasis, y'know what I mean? It seems to have been the right time for it."

—Jimi Goodwin on the timing of Lost Souls [9]

In late 1998, Doves joined Manchester-based musician Badly Drawn Boy as his backing band; their first release together was the single "Road Movie" in January 1999, recorded live in the studio. [14] Doves also performed on several songs on Badly Drawn Boy's debut album The Hour of Bewilderbeast , as well as accompanied him on tour dates. [15] Doves' second release was the Sea EP in May 1999. [15] A little more than a week before the EP's release, the band's mentor and friend Rob Gretton died of a heart attack. [16] In response, the band dedicated the music video for "Sea Song" to Rob's memory. [17] In August 1999, Doves' third EP Here It Comes was released, [18] with the title track charting at number 73 on the UK Singles Chart. [19]

Doves signed with London-based independent record label Heavenly Recordings, and a reissue of the band's debut single "The Cedar Room" was released as the forthcoming album's first single in March 2000. Andy Williams concluded of Lost Souls that, "The best thing was that after all the years of hard work and very testing times we knew we were finally creating the sort of music we had always wanted to ..." [8] The band also dedicated Lost Souls to their late friend and mentor Rob Gretton.

With their background in dance and house music, the band incorporated a variety of samples on Lost Souls: "A House" features the sounds of a fire burning, "Lost Souls" features funhouse music, "Break Me Gently" interpolates a sample of a telephone recording that originally appeared on hip hop group 3rd Bass's 1989 album The Cactus Album , [20] and "Sea Song" features a spoken-word dialogue extract from the 1984 Wim Wenders film Paris, Texas . [21] The band also cites Talk Talk's seminal 1988 album Spirit of Eden as a chief influence on Lost Souls. [13]

Release and tours

Lost Souls was released on 3 April 2000, and peaked at number 16 on the UK Albums Chart. [19] The album's first single "The Cedar Room" charted at number 33 on the Singles Chart. [19] "Catch the Sun", which was co-produced with Steve Osborne, was released as the album's second single in late May 2000, and third single "The Man Who Told Everything" was released at the end of October 2000. Both songs peaked at number 32 on the Singles Chart. [19] The album's release was supported by tours of the United Kingdom, including opening performances with Oasis at Wembley Stadium and Murrayfield Stadium in July 2000. [22] The band were also augmented live by keyboardist Martin Rebelski, who made his first appearance with Doves on the Here It Comes EP in 1999.

The U.S. release of the album came in October 2000 on Astralwerks, featuring three additional bonus tracks: "Darker", "Valley", and "Zither" (all of which were previously released on singles and EPs in the UK). "Darker" was later featured in the second episode of the American Fox television drama series 24 , and also in the movie Dandelion . The band embarked on their first-ever tour of North America in late 2000 and early 2001. Jimi Goodwin described to Excellent Online that the U.S. shows were "pleasantly surprising" with the turn-outs and crowd reactions: "The crowds have been amazing. Pretty much all selling out, which we couldn't believe. ... It's really nice. Astralwerks do seem pretty sussed, and they're just letting us be us. They're just as sniffy as us, going, 'Let's just check it out,' and not trying to convince people that you're the best thing since sliced bread, y'know. Let's just try sneaking in the back door a little. I don't know how American numbers work. I don't know how America works. This is our first time here as a band. We've travelled it, but not musically. We've done a few of them sit-down, meet-and-greets with radio, we've gotten some acoustic work out. ... But, yeah, we're really impressed by people loving the shows and everything. And we're playing better than ever, I think. In England, we've been getting a bit paranoid – 'we can't play this set anymore, we need some new tunes in there.' It's getting a bit old. Time to say, 'Come on lads, the band's playing the same set, time to throw in some new shit.'" [9]

Reception

Lost Souls
Doves Lost Souls.jpg
Studio album by
Released3 April 2000 (2000-04-03)
Recorded1996–2000
Studio
Genre
Length59:09
Label Heavenly
Producer Doves; Steve Osborne (track 8)
Doves chronology
Here It Comes
(1999)
Lost Souls
(2000)
Lost Sides
(2001)
Doves studio album chronology
Lost Souls
(2000)
The Last Broadcast
(2002)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [23]
The Guardian Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [24]
Los Angeles Times Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar half.svg [25]
NME 9/10 [26]
Pitchfork 6.8/10 [27]
Q Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svgStar empty.svg [28]
Record Collector Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [29]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar half.svgStar empty.svg [30]
Select 4/5 [31]
Uncut Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [32]

Lost Souls was met with generally positive reviews. In a 2009 review, BBC praised the album, and described the album as a rock record that kept the dance spirit alive, but could also appeal to a pop audience: "Lost Souls was a record that was widely discussed, and people wondered aloud whether its success marked the end of another era of dance music. In truth, it was a record about growing up; about giving up the drugs and the madness of The Haçienda, where the three Cheshire lads met. But because the simmering emotion on songs like 'The Cedar Room' was expressed through guitars rather than synths, in no way did that mean that Doves were taking dance music out the back and burying it in a shallow grave. But there was emotion, too – 'The Cedar Room' is a beautiful seven-minute break-up song that complains: 'I tried to sleep alone, but I couldn't do it.' This was a pop album that eventually appealed widely, and not just to the grown-up clubbers that could have been its sole audience." [33] Q called the album "heavy, sombre and lugubrious ... it makes for seriously claustrophobic listening, until it takes a great gulp of euphoria." [34] NME awarded the album 9 out of 10, and called the album "a serious and intense record ... the first great album to come from Manchester since Definitely Maybe ... they make being sad after drugs sound great." [26] In a mixed review, Pitchfork reviewer Sam Eccleston took a "straightforward" and "cynical" approach with the album and rated it 6.8 out of 10, saying, "Tonally, Lost Souls reflects the after-after-midnight hours, as if the boys felt the need to document the hung-over and blissed-out aftermath of the dancing-hours frenzy their Sub Sub days offered listeners years ago." The review goes on to say that, "The heart of the problem on Lost Souls is its overreaching ambition ... [but] ... despite its reach and ambition, works best in its most conventionally melodic moments." [27]

Lost Souls was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2000, but lost out to Badly Drawn Boy's The Hour of Bewilderbeast , the album Doves had featured as a backing band on.

The album was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die . [35] Manchester icon and Doves influence Johnny Marr called the album "a vast 3am melancholic beauty brought to life." [5]

Artwork

The sleeve design and artwork was done by frequent Doves collaborator and art director Rick Myers. Myers has done the artwork and design for all of Doves' albums and singles from 1998's Cedar EP to the band's compilation album The Places Between: The Best of Doves in 2010. [36] The photography was done by another frequent Doves collaborator, Richard Mulhearn, and the boxer featured in the photos is Sean McHale of the Ardwick Lads Boxing Club. [37]

In April 2020, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the release of Lost Souls, Rick Myers posted the original photo montage that comprises the album cover to social media and the official Doves Music Blog. [3]

Track listing

All tracks are written by Jez Williams, Jimi Goodwin, and Andy Williams

No.TitleLength
1."Firesuite"4:36
2."Here It Comes"4:50
3."Break Me Gently"4:38
4."Sea Song"6:12
5."Rise"5:38
6."Lost Souls"6:09
7."Melody Calls"3:27
8."Catch the Sun"4:49
9."The Man Who Told Everything"5:47
10."The Cedar Room"7:38
11."Reprise"1:45
12."A House"3:40
US bonus tracks
No.TitleLength
13."Darker"5:51
14."Valley"4:26
15."Zither"2:36
Japan bonus tracks
No.TitleLength
13."Valley"4:26
14."Crunch"4:00
15."Your Shadow Lay Across My Life"3:45

Release history

CountryDateLabelFormatCatalogue #
United Kingdom3 April 2000 Heavenly Recordings CDHVNLP26CD
Double LP (heavyweight vinyl; gatefold sleeve)HVNLP26
United States17 October 2000 Astralwerks CD (3 bonus tracks)ASW 50248 (724385024825)
Double LP (numbered edition; gatefold sleeve)ASW 50248 (724385024818)
Japan7 March 2001 Toshiba-EMI CD (3 bonus tracks)TOCP-65682
Europe31 May 2019Universal Strategic Marketing/Virgin EMIDouble LP (limited/numbered edition on grey-coloured vinyl) [38] 7748262
United Kingdom27 November 2020Double LP (black vinyl)856866
United States15 January 2021

Personnel

Band
Additional musicians
Production
Visual

Charts

Chart (2000)Peak
position
UK Albums Chart [19] 16
Australian Albums Chart [39] 68
Irish Albums Chart [40] 72

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