Doll By Doll: Endgame (Part two)

The long retrospective combines an in-depth appreciation of the Doll by Doll albums with the author's recollections and older passages of conversation. At its centre at first is “Gypsy Blood”, which the author calls his irreplaceable favourite album. He describes its shift from accessible songs to menacing, many-layered soundscapes and explains its commercial ineffectiveness partly by the band's difficult public image.

Next comes the third album, of the same name as the band: the text emphasises the attempt at the time to write more comprehensible songs without giving up emotional intensity. In the reproduced answers Leven explains his changed idea of entertainment and the relationship between personal experience, psychedelia and song construction. The author describes his own encounters with Leven as friendly and funny, alongside his intimidating stage presence.

The account extends beyond the end of the group to the later solo career. It ends with the note that Jo Shaw and Dave McIntosh played with friends in a pub in Cricklewood in 2012 in memory of Leven. This adds to the existing trail to the tribute evening, but gives neither an exact date nor the name of the pub here. Older interview quotations and retrospectives from 2007 are interwoven with the narrator's present of 2017.