The debut album of the South London five-piece is aptly titled “WOOF”., and it’s a microcosm of their live show: rambunctious and odd and best when it’s loud. But the real tension that keeps “WOOF”. afloat is that, like their live shows, you can never quite tell if you’re in on the joke. And that’s because, as hard as they go, Fat Dog songs are also kind of silly.
Take “King of the Slugs,” the seven-minute lead single: Over a thick, acidic bassline, Love rants and raves about his titular royalty status. He barks it out, and the band crests to a drop. But instead of a punkish release, they veer into a melody that sounds like it was pulled from a Klezmer band (for my music theory nerds: it’s the fifth mode of the harmonic minor, traditionally used in Klezmer).
Halfway through the track, Love chants “the wall,” and the song accelerates like a demented, half-awake polka. “King of the Slugs” takes the path of most resistance from its start to end, tumbling through tempo changes and halftimes like the town drunk. But still, it’s dance music, warped through Fat Dog’s perverse, vampiric sensibility. The “WOOF”. opener, “Vigilante,” commences with a timpani hit and Love bellowing, “It’s fucking Fat Dog, baby!”
The South London five-piece Fat Dog released their debut album, “WOOF“., in September via Domino Recordings. The brand new track, “Peace Song,” features a children’s choir.
Love monologues over a villainous orchestra, proclaiming that he “watched the first man draw blood from the second man, saw the first death and the failure of flesh.” It’s so cinematic and macabre that it crests into irony. Still, they churn out a hook from all that verbose nonsense. Almost every track on “WOOF”. follows this pattern. They layer up synths and strings until they’re comically grandiose, and then the band snaps into a bouncy hook. The build-up is just hot air. When they drop, they mean business.
When the album was announced, the band shared its lead single “Running,” via a music video. Then they shared its next single, “I am the King,” The album’s next single, “Wither,” was released via a music video inspired by ’90s video games .
Love produced the album with James Ford and Jimmy Robertson. Influences mentioned in the press release include: Bicep, I.R.O.K, Kamasi Washington, and the Russian experimental EDM group Little Big.
“A lot of music at the moment is very cerebral and people won’t dance to it,” says Hughes. “Our music is the polar opposite of thinking music.” Joe Love fronts Fat Dog and the band also features Chris Hughes (keyboards/synths), Ben Harris (bass), Johnny Hutchinson (drums) and Morgan Wallace (keyboards/saxophone).
The Fat Angel Sings 