Doves (Fillmore, 13 June 2005)

Doves played an excellent set at the Fillmore tonight. With a packed house and plenty of booze a flowing and Mary Jane a smokin', the crowd was ready to see this established band play their new songs from the somewhat sub par Lost Cities and their classics. As you know, Doves cancelled their original date at the Fillmore because of lead singer Jimi Goodwin losing his voice. Well, his voice was fine and strong tonight - although he couldn't keep up with the final song as I will describe below.

Doves opened up with an instrumental whose title escapes me at the moment. Accompanying this instrumental was a phenomenal light show that is similar to Kasabian's set-up back at Slim's a few months ago. The Fillmore is a fantastic and beautiful venue, and with the lights shining as they were, you can see the rows of chandeliers at the top. It was a nice start to this set, and there was plenty more where that came from.

They opened up with "New York" from their second album, The Last Broadcast. Accompanying this song was another light spectacular and a video of archive footage from the 1930's and 1940's it seems like, with zepplins and huge cruise ships ala The Titanic. The white backdrop used to project images projected four images in almost an overlapping pattern. It was a nice touch, compared to the traditional one dimensional footage. "New York" was an appropriate start with the strong guitars and the booming drums that accompany it.

The next song, or maybe the one after, was off the new album Some Cities. "Black and White Town," which is their first single off the new album and my personal favourite was played the same way as "New York" with black and white video footage and a great light show. The keyboards, which sounds a lot like "Heatwave," was the highlight of this song.

More songs from Some Cities were played, but those songs didn't get as much loud reception as Doves' older songs such as "There Goes the Fear," which was played as the last song, or "Sea Song" from Lost Souls. The only "old" song that didn't get a good reception was "Last Broadcast," which seemed really dull and repetitive compared to the other songs that they were playing.

Throughout the set, Jimi thanked the crowd for their support throughout the years and how they were so excited to play the Fillmore.

The last song was "Cedar Room," which my friend was longing for the entire night. So was I, but it was a rather disappointing performance of this excellent song. Jimi's vocals were really slow for the fast pace of this song. His vocals seemed as if they were three steps behind, while the music and the backing vocals were three steps ahead. It got annoying to me, but the rest of the crowd didn't mind. It was a good song to end with, but I wished it was done better.

Overall, a great performance by Doves. Although they are good as they are, the accompaniment of the lights and the videos (especially the video for "There Goes the Fear") added so much more to the show.

Beer Rating: 2 Beers