Kingdom of Rust by Doves

Kingdom of Rust, Doves' fourth studio album, arrived on Heavenly on 6 April 2009 after the longest wait of their career to that point, four years on from Some Cities, and it came out of a stormy stretch in the band's life. You wouldn't guess the turmoil from how the Wilmslow trio sound: Jimi Goodwin singing and playing bass, the Williams twins, Jez on guitar and Andy on drums, still building songs that feel like weather rolling in, big, slow-burning and cinematic, with the dance-floor instincts of their Sub Sub days pulsing somewhere underneath.

The critics mostly liked what they heard, and the album went in at number two at home. The title track led the way as a single in March, and "Winter Hill" followed in July. It turned out to be the last album before a long silence: after touring it through 2009, Doves stepped away in 2010 and didn't return with a new studio record until 2020.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.