An interesting review of One Dove's Morning Dove White by Matthew Schnipper, as part of Pitchfork's Sunday Review series of belated reviews (in this case because the site didn't exist when the album came out in 1993). The score of 8.7 is higher than anything it would have received at the time.
At the time, the album was felt to itself be belated - one of those anticipated albums that takes too long to be made.... (The delay came from a struggle with the record company, who pressurized them to put out more poppified version of the tracks, with radio-friendly mixes).
Reviewers in the UK as I recall felt the album, when it did arrive long after the initial buzz wave, to be underwhelming....
Certainly there didn't seem to be anything else on it as amazing as the single “White Love", which appears twice, in the Guitar Paradise Mix and as a reprise.
“White Love” stalled just outside the Top 40.
(They did have a small hit with “Breakdown” after the album’s release).
Listening again, I heard some really lovely tunes that sit somewhere between Saint
Etienne and Seefeel – "My Friend”, "There Goes The Cure", “Transient Truth”.
A certain too-pure dream of perfect pop, a distillate of essences too rarified to survive the commercial rough-and-tumble of actual real-world pop…. meets dubby-clubby sounds… wisped through with ultra-breathy ethereal-girliness that places the group near shoegaze. (One reviewer described them as "Cocteau Twins just back from Ibiza").
Part of that Weatherall moment in UK pop (wasn’t there an initiative called the 98 bpm Movement slowing the music down from house tempo to a reggae-ish sway?... which would also make it a fellow-traveler with the Bristol sound. *
And then there’s Dot Allison’s voice…. Airy …. almost Medieval at times… a devotional sigh drifting through the cloisters of an abbey.... a sound that joins the dots between Lisa Gerrard and
Kirsty Hawkshaw
“Whiteness” is the word.
Despite the dub and house elements, One Dove always seemed a supremely blanched sort of sound
Maybe that’s partly auto-suggestion, from titles like “White Love” and Morning Dove
White
But it’s also Dot's pure-as-snow tones.
.jpg)
And it’s also the whiteness of Dot herself...
She looks like she’s made of snow...
A reminder that Scotland is nearer Scandinavia than the South of England.
Talking of the colour white
I can find no confirmation of this out there, but I continue to believe – I wish
to believe – that the group are named One Dove as a sly nod to White
Doves: an Ecstasy pill of ultra-blissy repute... the kind of pill that makes veterans
of a certain era go all “ooh gosh” wistful, pursing their lips and exhaling with the memory rush
As well as "White Doves", there were also Pink Doves and Speckled Doves. According to this drug awareness postcard, though, the Dove wasn't among the highest of MDMA content pills around then. Perhaps it was just uncut with other things like speed, so it was a purer, cleaner sort of 'classic Ecstasy' lovey-dovey feeling.
White Dove / "White Love"
Morning Dove White / White Dove Morning….
This was music for the afterglow… that 6AM dawn-after-the-rave feeling…. no one around… the city deserted and silent… and you tingling still... feeling translucent… unbodied... hollowed out by ecstasy
And then the other druggy connotation of “white” would be the “whitey” – a
white-out... swooning, fainting, falling on the floor …. a pill too strong… or one pill too many
The chorus in “White Love” - if you can even call that wordless gaseous shiver-shudder a chorus - sounds like a whitey.... an internal avalanche of bliss... a deathgasm.
A voice coming, and coming – apart at the seams. Saint Teresa in the throes.**
Sampled as opposed to sung, this kind of erotic-cosmic oozy-woozy feeling was all over rave tunes of the era - wordless diva cries and moans, looped into bliss-spasms - like Shades of Rhythm’s “Sound of Eden”.
That's where the track titles, the sound, and the look (not just Dot's complexion and hair, but on the album cover she's dressed in white too), all these things converge - a meld, or braid, of spiritual and erotic.
Songs like sexy psalms
The cover could be a morning-after-the-night-before tableau - Dot the sleeping beauty... unable to keep her eyes open, her head from drooping... the Other Chaps wasted and drowsy.
Talking of music for the afterglow....
One Dove's "Fallen" featured on this compilation from a few years ago put together by Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs: Fell From the Sun: Downtempo & After Hours 1990-91.
A whole bunch of 98-bpm-or-thereabouts tunes described by the label by the label as "comedown downbeat, sunrise indie-dance and woozy morning moods".
Tracks like The Grid's "Floatation", BBG's Satie-laced "Snappiness", The Aloof's ‘Never Get Out Of The Boat’, Sheer Taft's "Cascades (Hypnotone Mix)", Moodswings's "Spiritual High".
The comp's timespan – 1990-91 – shows how past-their-moment One Dove were when they finally dropped Morning Dove White in 1993.
Fell From the Sun fits the Icarian theme of having flown too high, starting to crash... a still glowing ember. ("Higher Than The Sun" by the Primals is on there).
The compilation's title though appears to come from the Opal song, as also recorded by Pale Saints. (The latter's name fits the blanched-by-bliss theme).
Not on the Fell from the Sun comp but partaking of the vibe of that time
That Creation / indie-dance / post-Madchester / UK house nexus
I did a little interview with her around it for Spin.
"I Wanna Feel the Chill" was one tune that stood out on a record that otherwise felt a bit subdued by its own good taste. The eerie guitar lick is sampled from Tim Buckley's "Dream Letter."
"Chill" - in either of its meanings - again shows an understanding of her thematic matrix.
Exaltation of Larks, from 2007, is another evocative title.
Her latest album Consciousology is on the shoegaze label Sonic Cathedral.
* Well, I could swear someone telling about a 98 Bpm Movement started by Paul Oakenfold.... but it must have got mangled in the memory: Movement 98 was in fact a Paul Oakenfold project, centered around Carroll Thompson's vocals, and which scored a small UK hit in 1990 with the mid-tempo soul of "Joy and Heartbreak", with melodic elements borrowed from Satie's "Les Trois Gymnopedies".
Odd fact: Rob Davis, formerly the guitarist who wore women's clothing in Mud - was involved as a writer. Later he would make millions as the co-writer of Kylie-smash "Can't Get You Out of My Head".
