The Places Between: The Best of Doves is a compilation album from Manchester-based indie rock band Doves. The compilation was released on 5 April 2010 in the UK via Heavenly Recordings, and on 20 April 2010 in North America via Astralwerks. The album encompasses the band's entire career, collecting from their 2000 debut album Lost Souls, 2002's The Last Broadcast, 2005's Some Cities, and their 2009 album Kingdom of Rust, as well as an assortment of EPs and singles. The compilation was released as a standard single-disc best-of, as well as a deluxe three-disc edition, featuring the best-of album along with a bonus disc of B-sides, rarities, alternate versions, and album cuts, plus a bonus DVD collecting all of the band's music videos from 1998 through 2009. It peaked at #12 on the UK Albums Chart. The best-of was preceded by the single "Andalucia", released to radio stations on 1 March 2010, then as a digital download-only single on 5 April 2010.

Conception

In an interview with Spinner.com, Jimi Goodwin stated that the band was "very involved" in selecting tracks to comprise the track listings, stating that, "Hopefully, it stands up to things like Songs to Learn & Sing by Echo & the Bunnymen, because I look at those as albums in their own right; you forget that they're compilations." Jez Williams stated in an interview with musicOMH that track selection was refreshing: "When you finish an album quite often you get out of the studio and just want to get away from it. I thought that it was interesting listening to this, because normally when we finish an album you wouldn't hear it again. It was great hearing the B-sides too. We feel we've written some pretty strong B-sides, but you get that thing where we're described as anthemic a lot, which is great, but I think the B-sides reveal a few other sides to us. It shows a lot more than what we're known for." Goodwin also told The Daily Record that the compilation is "wiping the slate clean – we have nothing else in the vaults now. That is it. Whatever we do from now on will be a new start." The band's recording hiatus lasted for over ten years, until they released their fifth studio album The Universal Want in September 2020. In the interim, Goodwin released a solo album entitled Odludek in 2014, while Jez and Andy Williams regrouped as Black Rivers and released an eponymously titled album in 2015.

Critical reception

The Places Between was met with very positive reviews. PopMatters awarded the compilation an 8 out of 10 rating, noting that, "When it comes to the singles they've put out... the consistency has been remarkable, with not a dud in the lot, the band putting out some of the most finely crafted rock songs to come out of the UK of late." Clash awarded the album a 9 out of 10 and called the collection "a beguiling celebration of truly excellent music." IndieLondon gave the album 5 out of 5 stars, calling the album "a best-of collection to savour," and the BBC hailed The Places Between as "a collection of monumental music to truly cherish."

Track listing

Bonus disc track listing

DVD track listing

Release history

Charts

Credits

All instruments by Doves, except: