Sometimes you listen to a band and find it hard to describe their sound. Never has that been more the case than with Fat Dog, and it seems like others have had the same problem. They’ve been described as a “hard-hitting, technically impressive blur;” a mixture of “dance, punk, klezmer and just about everything else;” a combination of “Nine Inch Nails and Depeche Mode crossed with European dance sounds.” A fan once told them they’re like “Madness from the future.” And if you add in some of the artists that the band themselves have listed as their influences – Bicep, Kamasi Washington, Little Big, Fat White Family – you end up even more baffled than when you started.
Joe Love is the frontman and founder, and ultimately the man responsible for all this confusion. “Ridiculous” is a word Love uses to describe Fat Dog’s sound. Spurred by the deep depths of boredom that only a Covid lockdown can induce, Love started creating the instrumentals that make up Fat Dog’s backbone. It was soon time to take the Dog off the leash and let it run riot around South London, so he assembled Morgan Wallace, Ben Harris, and Johnny ‘Doghead’ Hutch. Chris Hughes was the last to join, earning the upgrade from fan to band member by auditioning for the role of violist (Hughes had never played the viola before – according to Hughes, Love called his audition “one of the worst pieces of shit he’d ever heard in his life”).
Hughes – who in the end decided to give up the viola dream and settle for the keyboard instead – describes Fat Dog as “the polar opposite of thinking music… it’s music you feel in your body more than your brain.” Their live shows have become infamous, filled with pent-up, chaotic energy, but also allowing time for some much-needed crab dancing. Love carries a kind of cult-leader stage presence as the frontman, booming out vocals like ceremonial chants. Quickly they became regulars at The Windmill in Brixton, where the likes of Black Midi and Black Country, New Road earned their chops.
The reputation garnered by these live shows allowed Fat Dog to book gig after gig off the back of just a handful of official releases, even selling out venues like Scala last October and the 1500-capacity Electric Brixton. It also meant that, when the time came to put a their debut album, WOOF. (releasing September 6th), they had industry veterans like James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Haim, Gorillaz, Kylie Minogue) and Jimmy Robertson (The Last Dinner Party, Anna Calvi, Everything Everything) onboard to help produce.
When artists are famed for their live performances, the same energy can sometimes be lost in their recordings. This is not the case here. WOOF. captures the ridiculous, surreal mayhem of Fat Dog right from the get-go with the opening epilogue, "Vigilante." The album is bookended by these chilling monologues, and with the narrator’s thick Lancashire accent you can’t help but think of The Wicker Man and other folk horror classics. Some of the lines are existentially terrifying; “I was there to watch the first wretched cells of existence tear themselves apart, as the tides came in and froze and thawed and the cracks of the earth opened” could be taken straight out of the Necronomicon. But then you realise the narrator is Neil Bell, a regular face on the British TV soap opera scene (Corrie, The Bill, Casualty).
You get these tongue-in-cheek moments throughout WOOF., reminders that the band isn’t taking themselves too seriously. It’s a juxtaposition between silly, everyday mundanity and the apocalyptic, rambling poetry of a soothsayer. This is best demonstrated by the line “Like a moth crashing into the sun / Find a burger, a burger for your bun” from "Wither," a track that hits you with relentless explosions of gabba-like nonsense.
"King of the Slugs," the single that birthed Fat Dog, is a 7-minute odyssey, capturing the band’s wild range and showcasing why it’s so difficult to pin them down to one genre. You get sections of pounding techno, haunting choir vocals, and a beat switch that seems inspired by traditional Middle Eastern folk. The surreal, nightmarish imagery created (“I slide into the night / covered in Vaseline”) pairs perfectly with Love’s delivery, repeating his mantra as the song gets more and more frenzied. You have these chant-like hooks in most of the songs, including "All the Same" – a track that could easily be from a cyberpunk film soundtrack – and the hypnotic "I am the King," which includes WOOF.’s funniest line (“I ain't crying for you / I just watched Karate Kid 2”).
Listening to WOOF. is a bit like running a 5k (and this is coming from a man who is not very good at running 5ks). At times you’re energised, scared, angry, confused, a bit lost, and when it’s over you feel exhausted. But it’s a good kind of exhaustion. With WOOF., Fat Dog will chew you up, swallow you down, sh*t you out, and then chew you up again. It sounds horrible, but it’s actually great.
