Fat Dog have been the name on everyone’s lips over the last 12 months, with unforgettable live performances at Glastonbury, London’s Electric Brixton and on Jools Holland and anthemic singles that baffled, bemused and excited the entire UK scene, making them instant BBC 6 Music favourites.
This hype is well and truly deserved too. Their sound has a completely unique blend that captures a grimey Punk spirit, injects some stanky brass textures and wraps it all up in a whirlwind of electro-synth madness while frontman Joe Love spits out tangled streams of surrealist lyricism. Their debut album ‘WOOF.’ captures the poetically-infused angsty spirit of acts like Shame, the artistic, and oftentimes bizarre, flair of Black Country, New Road, the absorbing electro hypnotism of Underworld and plenty of dance worthy drops that are sure to be taking over the Alt club nights. It’s a hectic listening experience bursting with euphoria and was undeniably our favourite album of 2024!
From an outside perspective, this debut album project seemed to move really quickly with just over a year between their first ever single release and the release of the full album. However, as is often the case, their ‘overnight’ success happened over many years. Joe Love explained: “It might have seemed quick from the outside but it feels quite long for me, because I've been doing it for like four and a half years and we’ve played about one zillion gigs. It's definitely sped up quite a bit though, the past two years have felt really fast. I think that's probably what comes with signing to a label and then suddenly you're playing a gig pretty much every day and you don't really have a moment to catch your breath. So in that sense, right now it feels really fast, but then obviously all these songs were written several years ago. Maybe we should have released it earlier…before ‘Brat’”.
And like all truly creative minds, they didn't take a moment to rest, quickly releasing a follow up single 'Peace' that combines the sam hectic energy with a poignant, expansive sound: “We haven't really got time to make some new stuff but we've been trying. We’ve been trying a new drum and bass one…we’re trying to alienate people that are our fans at the moment; start afresh, Solve world peace etc”.
One of the first things that struck us when ‘WOOF.’ was released was the track ordering. The gargantuan drama of opening track ‘Vigilante’ could not have been placed anywhere else and is the perfect entry point that invites you into their world of madness. However, what did shock us is that we didn’t encounter any of their four early big singles ‘King of the Slugs’, ‘Running’, ‘All The Same’ or ‘I am the King’ until the album’s midpoint. In fact, these tracks are all packaged together resulting in an intense burst of hard-hitting electro-punk energy right in the middle of the record.
However, there was good reasoning behind this as the band explained: “We were just trying to make it sound like the live set but a bit more polished and that’s the order we’ve always played in. Our thinking was that all our fans are with us because of our live shows and Domino literally signed us based off the strength of our live set so wanted to capture that as best we could on the record. But there's also songs that are on the album that we don't really play so much anymore live. When you’re playing a live show it's nice to have a little sensitive, reflective moment with a slower song like ‘I am the King’ but sometimes if we play something like ‘Clowns’ you can see a change in the faces of the crowd, they get a little droopy eyed, a little sleepy and you don't want to bore them so we just want to keep it quite high octane”.
This live energy is certainly palpable throughout the record. From the very first heart-thumping drop in the opening track, you feel as though you’re right in the middle of an ecstatic crowd. The dense layering of synths and dance-worthy beats induces a compulsory motion inside of you while the otherworldly narration makes you feel as though you're part of an intergalactic moshpit. It is an album that is undoubtedly best experienced live. However, the album experience can make even the most mundane everyday task feel epic. “It’s a good album for looking out the window in the rain. A lot of people started going on runs to our music too. You can listen to ‘Running’ while running. So maybe it’s the perfect album to get swole too…”.
It is not just the music that invites you to step into a mind-melting surrealist landscape, their whole image and aesthetic feels abstract and otherworldly, whether that be the eerie dog mask that drummer Johnny Hutch sometimes wears on-stage or their futuristic press picture that you can see on the other page. Yet, most significantly is the striking album artwork that seems to depict some kind of canine overlord looking down on a crumbling dystopia. However, the band commented that this was a stroke of luck as they had very little guidance to offer the designer: “We honestly just said go crazy mate and then the guy made it and it turned out very good. I think we said don't make it too regional but I think it turned out very regional in the end. People probably don’t know where we’re from and I don’t think we’ve helped ourselves because the beginning of our album has a Northern bloke, Neil Bell, talking and our album cover could be like a little Northern town. So I think anyone who doesn't know us already could be forgiven for thinking we're a Northern band when actually we're just Southern ponces. I think it's a great album cover though because it's dystopian and it makes it look like something terrible has happened”.
This approach of just going crazy and not overthinking the project seems to be a common theme as they also explained how a lot of the lyrics simply came from messing about and seeing what stuck. “You could say that its about finding light in the darkness but it's all just a bit tongue in cheek really. Like, ‘wither before you die’ is a bit of a joke… it's a bit like ‘You've got to fight through, live on and grow old but you're gonna be crippled and then you can say you're done. I think the opening monologue is quite funny because it sounds really biblical and really intense but I'm not sure it actually means anything which can be said for a lot of the lyrics. It's quite fun coming up with the most insane sounding stuff that some crazy leader would be saying. It's just kind of a game. It makes everyone think the album's like a really high concept album and then there’s just lyrics in the middle that are just fucking insane”.
Perhaps this lack of seriousness has allowed a greater creative freedom throughout the album process as it is a record that feels completely devoid of constraint, unconcerned as to how it may be perceived. Regardless, it has landed them opportunities this year that caught them off guard, namely being invited onto Later with Jools Holland. We have to say that this seemed an odd pairing. Seeing Fat Dog on a show with such formal musical tradition did feel a little bit like spiking the punch bowl but their performance was sensational…even without Jools playing any boogie blues accompaniment! Even Fat Dog, who don’t seem to take anything too seriously, felt a little uneasy ahead of their set: “It was pretty awkward. I never really saw us as being the right band for Jools Holland. I really enjoyed it, but it was kind of weird. It was like getting to see how the sausage is made! It just felt so alien. We were really fucking nervous to be fair…I almost crapped my pants and I can remember my voice shaking but I think we got away with it a little bit.”
If you’ve still not managed to catch these guys live then don’t worry, they’ll be playing a host of European tour dates and UK festival's very soon. You can find tickets here. If their music and electrifying performances aren’t enough to entice you in, the band said there’ll be a few things that may surprise you when seeing them live, including… “Joe's a lot shorter than you think he is, he's got a lot less hair and his forehead’s a lot bigger than you expect it to be”.
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