Django Django – Doveland
Somewhere in Wisconsin, it’s said, there’s a town called Doveland. People claim their grandparents lived there and even keep souvenirs as proof, yet it doesn’t appear on any map and almost certainly never existed. This town is the starting point for Django Django’s sixth album, which feels like a rather fitting inspiration for a band who have spent more than 15 years chasing sounds nobody else was quite making.
The record isn’t about the town itself, as such. Drummer Dave Maclean initially imagined a road movie in which a woman hitchhikes across the US after finding a postcard of Doveland. This never materialised, of course, but its sense of journey and displacement found a place of its own in the music. Whereas the four-piece’s last album, 2023’s ‘Off Planet’, was sprawling, electronic and collaboration-heavy, ‘Doveland’ strips things back a little for vintage Django Django art-pop-rock.
Grief is the album’s undercurrent. Maclean lost his sister and bassist Jimmy Dixon lost his father while the album was being made, lending a sort of poignancy to the more reflective moments on the LP. Opener ‘Meteorite’, Dixon’s personal portrait of his father as a star bu...