What’s the best record to come out of Manchester in the last five years?

For the first time in decades, you’ll have to wrack your brain for a credible shortlist. There’s been Northern Sulphuric Soul by Rea and Christian, The Hour Of Bewilderbeast by Badly Drawn Boy and, at a push, New Order’s Get Ready. Apart from that, things start looking bleak. Oasis have continued with their great rock and roll dwindle, Shaun Ryder now looks terminally bummed, and while Twisted Nerve and Grand Central are capable of releasing cuts of endearing left-field magic, they just don’t seem to cast the same all-enveloping spell as Factory.

They can still talk the talk, the Mancs, but in recent times the pimp-rolling walks have been looking an awful lot less convincing.

Apart from Doves, that is. A trio of unassuming dance-traitors who, after serving their time as faceless studio-bods, in early 2000 released Lost Souls, a record that nonchalantly took its place in their hometown’s glittering musical canon.

“We thought if we could sell ten thousand, twenty thousand records it’d be enough to make another record and we’d be doing alright,” says Jez Williams. “So, when it did as well as it did, we were taken back. It was just dead cool knowing that people were into the kind of stuff we were into. It was ‘Wow, people are coming round at last to what we are doing’.”

Although Lost Souls was the Doves’ recorded debut, the band itself – made up of Jez, his brother Andy and their old schoolmate Jimi Goodwin – had been making music as a unit since the early ’90s, clocking up a hit in 1993 with ‘Ain’t No Use’ as dance act Sub Sub. This previous form helps, in part, explain why the album – with its bold Morriconne-meets-Moz sheen – sounded as accomplished and unerringly timeless as it did.

Two years on, and Doves are about to release their second LP The Last Broadcast. Fans of Lost Souls will be relieved to hear that the brooding melancholia and tough melodicism of that album are still very much in place. They might also be pleased to know that the band have brought all manner of other treats to the table – like the spooky Nick Drake pastoral of ‘M62 Song’, or the arms in the air Roses rush of ‘Words’, even some gospel on the mighty ‘Satellites’. It’s the sound of a great band very much in top form.

“It’s very diverse, but I think it’s coherent,” says Andy Williams. “It’s kind of more intense and extreme than Lost Souls. To be honest I think it’s gonna make more sense in three months. At the moment, because we’ve just finished it, it’s sort of messed up. I think we need to leave it for a while, come back and go, ‘ah so that’s what you were going on about’. But we’re really, really buzzing about it.”

Although talking about Boards of Canada, Simian and even The Byrds, Andy claims that inspiration for the record came from all manner of sources.

“I wrote the instrumental Where We’re Calling From the day after I saw Mulholland Drive,” he says. “It’s a fucking weird film man, there’s some mental shit going on in that movie and after watching it I just had to get this thing out.”

Speaking of films, considering that, after they had left school, the trio reunited on the dancefloor of The Haçienda, what’s the Doves’ take on 24 Hour Party People?

Jez: “Haven’t seen it yet, but we’ve been invited to the premier. Free booze, might as well go. Somebody bought me Tony Wilson’s book. It’s quite funny because loads of it surrounds Rob Gretton (former manager of New Order and Haçienda co-owner) who used to be the boss of one of our labels. If you grew up in Manchester at that time, then Factory was the be-all-and-end-all. When we signed to Rob, what was really interesting was the difference between our perception when we were teenagers that Factory was really cool, really well organised, really had its shit together, and the utter chaos that was the reality. Rob used to say to us ‘Whatever you fookin’ do, don’t own a fookin’ club.’”

Good advice that. Don’t give up the day job, lads. Please.