Jimi Goodwin has a couple of bugbears, both adjectives, and woe betide the person who utters them in his presence. The singer and bassist of the Manchester three-piece Doves is dousing a ferocious hangover with a succession of stiff shorts in a London beer garden. The night before, his band had previewed material from their forthcoming second album at a sold-out show in the capital, and things had, as they will, "carried on" a bit. Goodwin finally got to bed at 11am. It is now four in the afternoon, and he has yet to eat.

"Eclectic and melancholic," he fumes, sparking up another ciggy. "Let's find some other words, please." He's not exactly crazy about "epic", either, but the first two were the words trotted out most regularly to describe Doves' Mercury prize-nominated debut, Lost Souls, and Goodwin expects much the same for its follow-up, The Last Broadcast. One writer called their music "northern moans", and he was being nice. "Grizzly Mancunians, dustbin men," intones Goodwin. "Somebody reviewed the new single (There Goes the Fear), and it was like, 'Who would have thought it, three grizzly...' There's no bears in Manchester, mate." The single is released in a limited edition tomorrow. Unusually, it is also being deleted on the same day, which should make it an instant collectors' item.

The Doves story is so woven into the fabric of their songs that it has sometimes been hard to judge the music they make, other than from its refracting perspective. Very crudely, this is it. The 15-year-old Goodwin met the twins Andy and Jez Williams (respectively, drummer and guitarist in the band) while they were all still at school. At the time, Goodwin was going through a Jefferson Airplane, Hendrix and King Crimson phase, whereas, the singer recalls, "them two as kids were big Smith-heads". Flick forward seven years and the trio are popping pills at the Hacienda, during the dying days of an era captured in the new film 24 Hour Party People. They are also, under the aegis of New Order's manager, the late Rob Gretton, attempting to become pop stars. And nobody is more surprised than them when, in 1993, as Sub Sub, the three have a Top 10 hit with the song Ain't No Love. Which is where the rot sets in.

"It makes sense to us, but it's bound to," says Goodwin, about the link between their 1990s incarnation and the band they have since become, which some have found hard to detect. "And we've got to the stage now where we're not going to be boxed in by things like 'the fire'. It's gone beyond that."

Ah, the fire. They had ploughed the Ain't No Love money into a studio that, on the twins' birthday in 1996, went up in flames because of an electrical fault. A fireman at the scene strummed a singed acoustic guitar and let Jez know that he had always wanted to be a musician. The band lost everything.

It is at this stage that the words "phoenix" and "flames" spring to mind, but with Doves, things are rarely so simple: instead, if Goodwin will forgive me, this is where "melancholic" comes into play. For Lost Souls, almost 10 years in the making, is unmistakably the product of the post-blaze conditions it was recorded in.

"It was a very enclosed, claustrophobic situation," says Jez. Goodwin agrees. "I think we'd also got almost institutionalised by ourselves," he adds, recalling their tail-chasing travails in the bowels of a windowless Manchester studio belonging to New Order. "I had to scream and shout: 'Either we do a few dodgy gigs on Tuesday nights in front of nine people or we're just going to kill it.'" Anyone expecting the same of The Last Broadcast is in for a surprise. There is still something magnificent and brooding about new tracks such as The Sulphur Man, but the album takes its cue chiefly from the more upbeat moments on their debut such as Here It Comes and Melody Calls. Among the standouts are the panoramic Words; what Goodwin jokingly describes as the "bubble-gum pop" of Pounding, which is final confirmation of Jez's genius as a guitarist; and the show stopper, Satellites, whose bass line, isolated in reprise, echoes that of With or Without You (not that a band of even U2's corporate might can claim patent on the plagal cadence).

Talk of U2 is pertinent, although mercifully, with Doves, there is no sign of pulpits or self-burnishing haloes. For already some are predicting that the band are set to break America. Goodwin is far from convinced. "We'll only do a month at a time on a tour bus, because we're not kids any more. You hear about Primal Scream, nine months on the road and they sold, like, 3,000 f***ing albums, and they're brilliant." He's ambivalent, too, about the wisdom of getting into the MTV-friendly video game. "F*** the video," he says. "With the wineglass, the rose and the ballet dancer. We're learning to field all that bollocks: you know, you must support Puddle of Mudd in Atlanta at 1.30 in the afternoon wearing tiny beards."

Jez is more relaxed about the question, but he's probably had more sleep and a decent breakfast. "We're not prepared to do it if we don't get the signs. What's the point of making yourself miserable? But if we are getting the right signs, then, yeah, we'll do it."

All three are passionate about what they rightly believe to be a special record - by a country mile the best British album so far this year. "If a band say they only make music for their own pleasure, they're lying," says Jez. "We want our music to be loved."

The calamities, tunnel vision and hard labour that produced Lost Souls were rewarded by a gold disc and a huge and fanatical fan base. The new album will surely multiply both, even if America doesn't join in the celebrations.

"Escape is a big thing with us," says Goodwin. "Wriggling out of things. We like doing things differently, because we all bring different things to the band."

Epic, melancholic and eclectic? "U2, Bunnymen, Simple Minds," he retorts. "All good, innit? Anyone for another jar?"

The Last Broadcast is released on Heavenly on April 29

www.doves.net News and discography

Explore Music

• CD Reviews

• Live Reviews

• Classical

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010