Some Cities by Doves

Some Cities, the third Doves album, came out on Heavenly on 21 February 2005 and went straight to number 1 in Britain, their second chart-topper in a row. Ben Hillier produced it, and the band, singer and bassist Jimi Goodwin with the Williams twins, Jez on guitar and Andy on drums, set out to make something rawer and more stripped-down than the widescreen swoon of their earlier records.

It's a record about Manchester changing shape under their feet, the physical changes to their hometown mirrored by the upheavals going on inside people. "Black and White Town" is the rush of it, a thumping, headlong stomp that became their second-biggest single, peaking at number 6. "Snowden" and "Sky Starts Falling" followed, reaching 17 and 45, but the album works best as a whole: grey skies, bright choruses and a dance-floor pulse left over from their days as Sub Sub.

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