Lost Doves - Set Your Sights Towards the Sun

  by Steve Kinrade

published: 8 / 3 / 2021




Lost Doves - Set Your Sights Towards the Sun


Label: Green Tea Productions
Format: CD
Evocative and beautiful debut album from folk rock duo the Lost Doves, which provides a welcome antidote to these dark times.



Review

Once in a while comes a set of songs that rejuvenates your belief in the power of music, the majesty of its art form, its emotional importance. Subjectively, it also helps if it deploys musical touch stones that reflect the influences of your favourite bands. So out of my left field may I present The Lost Doves, who with their debut album ‘Set Your Sights Towards the Sun’, shimmer like a beacon of hope in these troubled times. The team of Ian Bailey and Charlotte Newman kickstart proceedings with the jaunty title track opener, and the proceeding songs not only constantly match this standard, but at times surpass it. This is very much a songwriters album - reinforced by the two covers that are Johnny Mercer’s haunting ‘Autumn Leaves’ and Scott Walker’s ‘Duchess’. But the original compositions more than hold their own to provide a celebration of the intrinsic power of crafted composition and word-smithery. The production is nuanced and always in sympathetic union to what the song needs. Made in Bailey’s home studio in Preston, it could pass as having been made in Nashville’s Blackbird Studio. The afore mentioned ‘Autumn Leaves’ is stripped back to just guitar and Newman provides an apt hauntingly melancholic vocal. ‘See Saw’ is like a nursery rhyme, with Newman’s vocals dove tailing nicely with Bailey’s. ‘The Wishing Gate”’is majestic folk-rock, reminding these ears of the Sandy Denny era of Fairport Convention. This is such a beautiful album, and near perfect. My only detraction would be the inclusion of a couple of tracks that seem to break the spell that otherwise the music effortlessly had charmed. But no matter - this is a minor distraction that would irritate more if that rest of the songs weren’t as strong as they are. ‘Set Your Sights Towards the Sun’ is an album that acts as an antidote to the terrible times that at the moment we are all sharing. As I sit and watch the snow fall across these exhausted isles I know that this is an album that I will be listening to for the rest of my life. Songs like ‘You Stop Me from Falling’ and ‘Wired into You’ are just effortlessly timeless. It’s all achingly beautiful. Hopefully soon the smiles we all have hidden inside ourselves will eventually be allowed to make themselves known. It’s a time we are all are longing for, and so long overdue. But in the meantime, this is an album to keep our hope and prayers very much alive. The Lost Doves, you have our gratitude.



Track Listing:-

1 Set Your Sights Towards the Sun
2 Waves
3 You Stop Me from Falling
4 She’s Waking up to Close Her Eyes
5 The Wishing Gate
6 Wired into You
7 Autumn Leaves
8 See Saw
9 Sally Weather
10 More Than I
11 The Clowns Are Coming to Town
12 Duchess
13 Isolation



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