ritish music has always been more cerebral than what us Yanks can churn out (I'm not taking the Spice Girls and Robbie Williams into consideration). Sure, the USA can put on its thinking cap and produce some pretty heady concoctions, but it's never embraced in the Top 40, which England does with regularity.


Witness The Doves, and their brief little trip through a town called Melancholy: Lost Souls. The title alone should clue you in to the fact that they don't sing about sunshine and teddy bears.


Previously known under the moniker of Sub Sub, they recorded an album or two of passable synth-pop, before their studio burned down, destroying countless recordings.


Apparently, The Doves found the strength to regroup, and rethink their approach to music. While Lost Souls is undeniably the work of a rock group (ya know - bass, drums, guitar, verse-chorus-verse structures), it's still one of the most electronica-aware albums in recent memory. Programming, keyboards and subtle samples are found at every turn on Lost Souls, making it more than just another depressing album by a bunch of mopey fops. Even if Lost Souls had nothing else going for it (fortunately, it does), it would still have great atmosphere, not to mention production value.


Perhaps the most surprising thing about The Doves is the fact that they're such good musicians. Don't get me wrong; there's no orgasm-inducing solos a'la "Layla" here, but it's still pretty accomplished. Heartfelt acoustic guitar, echoed riffs, and steady drumming abound. This from a group that until recently was blip-blooping on Casios.


Most bands in the vein of The Doves give me the impression that the group grew up on some isolated moor in the middle of rural England. The air is always foggy, the ground is always soggy, and contact with the outside world is minimal. The band wakes up in the morning, prays to a shrine of Ian Curtis made from twigs and moss, spends the next 15 hours playing really intricate and delicate music, sobs helplessly for about an hour, and then falls asleep to a Tolkein book, or something.


But make no mistake about it: The Doves have something to say (or at least think that they do), and they want you to hear it. Every single plucked guitar string, every syllable uttered by Jim Goodwin, and so on is treated like an ocean of sound, full of unrealized possibilities. Let's just say that their copy of Dark Side Of The Moon must be damn near death. Pretentious? Hell yes. Over-produced? Sometimes. Good music? For the most part.


Lost Souls isn't going to change the world, make you tear down your Radiohead posters, or make you quiver with ecstasy; but fortunately it won't send you screaming to the bathroom to puke up your lunch. What it will do is make you want to listen to all of your old post-punk records from the early/mid 80s (assuming you have any - if you don't, then shame on you). If Echo and the Bunnymen were still making halfway decent music (instead of just flogging to death ideas that Oasis has already flogged plenty), this is what they'd be playing. The Doves' sound is mournful yet hopeful, atmospheric, vaguely psychedelic but still poppy enough to get your toes tappin'.


The Doves are a little more pastoral than that, though. "The Man Who Told Everything" has a Belle & Sebastian-worthy acoustic riff and lyrics that'll have every arty, lonely teenage boy across the nation singing along; along with melodramatic string arrangements to draw out maximum emotional response. "Sea Song" makes copious use of the vocorder, and nearly all the tracks are bathed in tasteful electronic and string washes. Electric and acoustic guitars are entwined like lovers frequently, trading lead duties as they caress your ears. Oh yeah - Goodwin sings in this really yearning, mellow style that shouts out two things: (1) "I'm singing about the secret of life, and it's really burdensome," and (2) "Hey, don't I sound just like Thom Yorke? Isn't that insufferably cool?"


But all the multi-tracking and knob-twiddling in the studio won't help if you don't have a strong foundation of songs to start with. While The Doves haven't written any real classics on the album, there's not a bad track here. The opener, "Firesuite," is a logical opener, an instrumental piece that combines film-music, that whole epic-moor guitar sound and electronics to craft a song so overly dramatic it sounds like the newest James Bond theme. "Firesuite" provides a perfect lead-in to "Here It Comes," a piano-driven piece that sounds like Billy Joel discovered alt-rock.


The first real keeper on Lost Souls, though is the six-minute slice of electronic-rock, "Sea Song." Textures and rhythms flow, a beautiful and flowing cyclic guitar riff runs through the whole song like an undercurrent, and Goodwin's processed vocal takes wing, floating above the mix like...well, like a dove. "Sea Song" gives way to the not-as-impressive Verve-isms of "Rise" and "Lost Souls."


The disc is redeemed by its powerhouse second half, though. Kicking off with the off-the-cuff sounding "Melody Calls," this is where Lost Souls really gets interesting. "Melody Calls" is brighter, looser, and shorter (at 3:36) than anything else on the disc. The goofy little toy piano and harmonica solos of "Melody..." are juxtaposed nicely with "Catch The Sun," filled with enough washed-out, epic-sounding guitars and high-end electronics to make The Chameleons weep. "Catch The Sun" is the biggest "rocker" on the album, and has a chorus that'll have you singing along in no time. Welcome to the return of shoegazing pop; God knows I've missed it. "The Man Who Told Everything" is another fast change of pace, this time to a slow-burning ballad of adolescent alienation.


"The Cedar Room" is the album's biggest song (literally - it's over seven and a half minutes), and I wish I could tell you its an awful, overblown mess, but I'd be wrong. I would be right in saying its heavily indebted to "Champagne Supernova," which is in turn in debt to "Hey Jude," but it's "hey everyone - join hands and sing along"-sounding chorus is hard to resist. Lost Souls closes with an instrumental reprise of "The Man Who...", and then ends on the nice but bland "A House."


The three bonus tracks tacked on at the end are definitely worth it, though. "Darker" is simply wonderful, and should have been sequenced into the actual run of the album. It provides a grimy and dark counterpoint to the album's stately grace and heavenly sounding music. "Valley" is a more competent imitation of The Verve, and "Zither" is a touching instrumental.


In the end, Lost Souls is a wonderful mood-setter (it's already on my list of favorite rainy-day albums), and filled with emotional, from-the-heart anthems. Albums are rarely this uniformly hypnotic and calming.