Fat Dog’s mix of dance-punk, oompah music and dadaist lyrics sounds plenty fresh on paper until you realise that various strands of that DNA have been gaining steam culturally for a while. The London band’s boisterous debut album, Woof, arrives at the end of a summer that saw Kesha release the antagonistic klezmer-pop internet hit Joyride; flamboyant NYC dance-punk revivalists Model/Actriz tear through the festival circuit; and their scene compatriot the Dare get a career boost via prime placement on Charli xcx’s Brat. Closer to home, Dublin’s Gilla Band broke through in 2022 with Most Normal, an arresting and discombobulating mix of club rat sneer and crust punk snarl.
Forgive Woof, then, for sounding a little trite. Frontman Joe Love has an entertaining, to-the-point lyrical style – it does take guts to drop a chorus like “Crackheads to the left / And clowns to the right / I’m falling down the stairs / No jiggy for me tonight”, which is absurd, plain and childish all at once – and the band is endearingly keen on bizarre left turns, like the caterwauling oompah section on King of the Slugs. The flailing rhythms of Running and Wither feel like they were – effectively – designed with a 2am festival set in mind, much like the scream of “It’s fucking Fat Dog, baby!” on opener Vigilante, a few moments before they break into a groove so sleazy it would make Terry Richardson blush. It’s sparky, well made, scaled up appropriately by producer James Ford – and just a little late to the punch.
