For any of you readers who don’t know me personally (at least one? Maybe?), I’m going to the Nateva Music Festival in early July. I don’t know most of the bands other than the headliners (I’m mostly going to see P-Funk and The Flaming Lips), so I decided to check out a few albums by the bands I’m not familiar with. I’m toying with the idea of making this a weekly feature up until the festival. For now, let’s say every Sunday, word? The first album I’ve checked out is Fate by Dr. Dog.
Dr. Dog are an indie-pop band from Philadelphia; Fate is their fifth studio album, released in 2008. Like most indie-pop bands, Dr. Dog are very much informed by rock bands from the 60s and 70s. What’s nice about them is that though this album draws a lot of inspiration from The Beach Boys, The Band, and the Beatles, there are a lot of small touches that are unmistakably modern - things like sampled drums and keyboards - that allow the band to be more than another retro indie group.
That being said, one of the problems I have with this album is that at times it’s just a little bit TOO old-sounding. Dr. Dog have a habit of relying on nostalgia for a lot of their tunes, and while this works very well for the most part, I feel like this overreliance on throwback sounds stops them from finding their own personality as a band – in my notes for this review, I described four of the eleven songs as “Beatles-y”, and comparisons to The Beach Boys, The Band, and The Rolling Stones and possibly other well-known classic rock acts are bound to occur to even the most casual of music listeners.
Luckily, the band has enough personality that they’re able to stand apart from other, boring indie-pop bands. Most notably, they’ve got a commanding control over “the hook”, that indescribable quality of music that makes a song “catchy”. These guys clearly know how to write some great melodies – I challenge you not to get the “choo-choo train” chorus of From stuck in your head. They’ve got a really nice, smooth quality to their music. The melodies are easily digestible, and the album manages to stay exciting through a variety of styles and moods, adding in some pretty cool flourishes like organs, strings, and clarinets.
The stand-outs here are pretty fantastic. The aforementioned From is absolutely infectious, though not one of the most original songs on the album; Army of Ancients' tremolo-picking guitar part gives it a mariachi feel, and the song contains a powerful vocal performance by singer Eliza Jones; and closer My Friend (which is oddly set up as two songs in one) starts off as a cool jammy number, but evolves into a stadium-rock tinged tune – there’s this interesting part in it near the end where the guitar line from another song, The Ark, is repeated, which makes me feel like that whole section is all repeated musical themes from the album. If this is the case, that’s pretty damn cool.
A couple songs near the end are a bit forgettable – 100 Years is a by-the-numbers The Band rip-off, and Uncovering the Old has the coolest intro off of the album, but there just isn’t much to it. Even in these cases, though, there’s usually one or two interesting things happening – an unusual piano tone, or some neat Wilco-esque noise, or a ticking clock leading into a drum beat.
Overall, Fate is just a solid album. It’s filled with some great melodies and neat song structures. At times, its use of nostalgic, 60s/70s rock sounds is a tad overbearing, but the album is just long enough that it doesn’t wear out its welcome. It’s not exactly an album you MUST hear, but it's alot of fun; I’ll definitely be checking out more of Dr. Dog’s stuff over the coming weeks.
Check this out if you like:
-The Band
-The Beatles
-Wilco
-Other indie-pop
Suggested Tracks:
-From
-Army of Ancients
-Hang On
Note: So, this "weekend extravaganza" didn't quite work out as planned. I wanted to get at least one more post up; let's just say there were some scheduling conflicts. I may have a post up tomorrow night, but if not, I'm gonna shoot for Tuesday. Word.
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