have always used music as a means to map out their imagination, to take the figurative and make it literal. New album ‘Doveland’ goes a step further – at once their most surreal and yet also potently personal album, it fuses together self-mad myth with emotional revelation.
A psych-pop song suite that touches on club culture, ‘Doveland’ references a semi-mythological town in the Mid-West which would disappear and re-appear at random. Across the songwriting, Django Django touch on grief and resilience, discovering new paths forward in the process.
For the recording process the band undertook extended recording sessions in the German countryside alongside producer Nick McCarthy (founding member of Franz Ferdinand), and composer/ producer .
Out now, here’s Django Django’s guide to ‘Doveland’ – tap in below.
: The title ‘Doveland’ came from Dave’s fascination with this mythic town in the US that might never have existed. This mystery was our anchor to write from. Trying to find relationships between music and places, real or not, ultimately shaped the landscape of the album.
All our lives and the people in them changed so much over the course of writing Doveland, and the songs really mirror this, being quieter and more introspective than our other records. Writing individually as well as together translated into deeply personal accounts in the tracks.
For the artwork, we loved the Northern Mudlarkers’ work – Imagining the stories behind each object, lost to time – this resonated with the sound and concept of the album. Working with Gail and Alex has been so much fun & we went mudlarking with them again on release day.
: A lot of ‘Doveland’ was conceived during lockdown when Jim, Dave, and Tommy had moved out of London where we’d all been based since the band’s inception. Separation and loss formed the backdrop, with Dave losing his sister and Jim his father.
: A lot of the album lyrics are introspective & are about journeying through memory, grief & how important people are only there for part of your story, whilst also finding happiness after getting through tough times.
1. Meteorite
At the time of writing ‘Meteorite’, I had just lost my dad. The lyrics are about a moment of finality, of an ending that leaves a scar – but that life continues. We stripped the track back to just piano, guitar and the string arrangements and it just seemed an obvious album opener.
‘Meteorite’ began as a more electronic track and got stripped right back to an acoustic guitar and singular piano line. For me, a big album moment was playing this track when we were DJing. It sounded amazing yet so different to anything else we had ever done.
: Written at home during Covid, the melancholic & inward looking sound mirrored separated individuals playing a role in a wider story. It made sense in the Doveland world – someone looking for an idea of a place rather than the place itself.
3. Still Life
‘Still Life’s inception was back during ‘Born Under Saturn’ & went through loads of tempo iterations before John Maclean, Dave’s brother (Beta Band) showed us loads of slow disco tracks. We slowed it down, simplified the chords & for the first time, everything seemed to gel
4. Little Me (ft. Hak Baker) –
: This was written on the Africa Express Bahidora trip in the Django’s hotel room in a jungle in Mexico. We’d been out the night before & in a hungover, reflective state Jim was playing a guitar riff. Hak seized it and the lyrics & melodies just flowed out of him almost in a oner, fully formed, whilst laying on the bed. It’s clearly a deeply personal song for Hak.
: Little Me was the process of combing through why I am how I am and taking accountability. A war between wanting to be a man when I feel like I’ve had to be a man my whole life. I wanted to be a kid, but where and how I grew up deleted that option for me. Coming to terms with that is what the song’s about.
5. Year Of The Snake
After most of Doveland was done, me and Vinny decided to head up to the highlands of Scotland to keep writing. It’s a personal track that came out of losing my sister and trying to battle through darkness to find light. It’s about embracing that darkness and the night, and staying strong until the new dawn comes.
6. Quicksand
The title came out of how funny I find it that I used to be terrified of quicksand – something that posed no real threat to me as a kid in the UK, but seemed SO real & terrifying from cartoons. I don’t think kids these days are much scared of quicksand. Maybe social media is quicksand now.
: This is one of my favourite tracks on the album. The sense of space & sparsness was new territory for us
7. Left Adrift
: This is about the carnage and wreckage you see in a city centre on a Saturday night. The track has this slightly sea sick feel to it so it felt quite a nice link.
8. So Heavy
: ‘So Heavy’ was jammed out on a trip up to the Scottish Highlands. The original demo put us in mind of JJ Cale and had this nice sleepy quality to it. I think we leant into this with the outro and the flute gives it a nice hazy feel.
: I started playing the main guitar line & humming the melody, not paying attention to what I was doing, then we started jamming it out. The lyrics conjured up that uneasy feeling I used to get when I was younger going to tough bars feeling something was going to kick off. The outro is the calm after the storm.
9. Bird Song
says: This one didn’t need a story to be told within it – the music builds a picture. Having these moments in the album helps build a landscape without it feeling too loaded. Doveland the place is somewhere that can only be imagined and I think Birdsong helps with this…
10. Indigo Road
: Dave had a lot going on during his sister’s illness & wrote a lot of the lyrics while going through that. It’s about imagining seeing someone you loved in a crowd long after they’ve gone.
: Dirty Hotel Blues started off life as a piano track that my brother John Maclean (The Beta Band/The Aliens) wrote during lockdown. It’s about touring America and how that feels like the film Trains, Planes and Automobiles.
12. Feel Alright (ft. Max Pope)
Feel Alright came from a session down in Devon where Max pulled a one-take wonder. We wanted to conjure up that feeling of freedom from hitting the road and leaving it all behind.. a simple rock n roll tale, as old as the great American dream!
‘Doveland’ is out now.