Originally the brainchild of songwriting partnership Dave Pearson (guitar) and Tom Lewis (bass), Leeds-based DOLORES have expanded to include drummer Gordon Kilroy and sultry voiced diva Fuzzy Jones in recent times and the resulting 10-track demo album is yet another exciting bucket drawn from the city's apparently bottomless well of creativity.
Dolores indulge in dark, cinematically-inclined music. It's guitar-driven rock, but shows off a liking for the Bristol trip-hop brigade and drags a dubby undertow along behind in places. Opening track "A Short Film About" gives you an idea where "Dolores" is coming from: it's claustrophobically funky with emotive vocals from the splendidly-named Fuzzy Jones and haunting, Muse-ish guitar from Pearson complementing beautifully.
Indeed, most of the album impressives technically. Tracks like "Reykjavik 101" - with its' spoken vocals and The Edge-style guitar squalls - is as filmic as its' title suggests, while "Intensive Care" is a rich and propulsive thing driven along by Jones's deceptively smooth vocals and Pearson's ever-versatile guitar. This time he's distant and emotive in the same way as The Durutti Column's Vini Reilly is at his best.
With its' subterranean bass spillage and strafeing shards of echoed guitar, "Who Is Dolores?" is again an excellent mood exercise, although that in itself represents the album's main problem for this writer. For all the band's proficiency, it ultimately ain't much of a song, which is a criticism you could also fling at "Without A Clue": again it's bleakly dreamy in mood and sounds a little like a rockier Portishead, but doesn't really deliver in the melody department. Mind you, it's preferable to the closing "Blur Blues" which - for all its' pugilism - veers too close to the dreaded jazz-rock fusion territory for this writer to stomach.
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Nevertheless, Dolores have plenty going for them elsewhere. "Practically Unkind" makes it clear the band can write decent, economic tunes as well and simply powers along on Dave's see-saw guitars, Fuzzy's mini-Chrissie Hynde vocal and Gordon's disco drumming. They keep two corkers in reserve for the home strait in "Air" and "Al's House" as well. The former is edgy and sensual, with ever-shifting moods and Pearson bringing on the heavy-duty sonic artillery towards the end, while "Al's House" is arguably the best track for me, with cool vocals, a funky backbone and fluid, Hendrixian guitar work.
It's early days for Dolores and the band's press release stresses they intend to re-record the material contained within when they present their commercial debut, but to these ears at least most of the pieces have fallen into place. They need a few more strategic hooks, but other than that they're away for slates.
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