Dog Is Dead
Daytrotter Session - Sep 5, 2012
- Welcome to Daytrotter
- Do The Right Thing
- River Jordan
- Teenage Daughter
- Glockenspiel Song
Dog Is Dead in a band of people who would call the glass even more than half full. They might be inclined to call it three quarters full, rounding the volume up. They would be willing to concede that we incur our raspberries and we gash our legs and arms up with strawberries from time to time, but that shit always heals faster than you would ever think it would. You could lose complete control of yourself, bash your head into the crease of a wall some night, bringing out the gnarliest of knots and what seems assured to be a black and blue zinger and come the following morning, you have to make a concerted effort to find any marking that would suggest that you’d been hurt. It just vaporizes and with it goes most of the memory of it. You just seem to faintly remember smashing yourself into a wall, but you can no longer prove it to anyone. You’re okay now and you’ll probably stay that way for a while.
The band from Nottingham, Britain, is enamored with the simple things – with good friends and grabbing the bull by the horns and just squeezing the most out of every second. They’re about forgetting what the clock says, what those heavy eyelids are crying for and just playing out the night with talking and embracing, with camaraderie and steady heartbeats. They are about believing that there are no tomorrows so it’s okay to take the clock all the way down to zero. Lead singer Robert Milton sings on “Any Movement,” “We are lonely riders/With our hearts on fire/And a lazy love/Just wasn’t quite enough for me.” It’s a sentiment that hasn’t had to brew. It’s not something that’s come to him after careful introspection. It’s just the way that it is. A lazy love or an uneventful day just isn’t quite good enough. There must be more. It can be better, much better and so it’s sought out. It’s better to throw caution out. It’s best to grab that pretty girl and take her home, to take a chance and feel what spontaneity can spur.
There are “tigers waiting to be tamed” in Dog Is Dead songs and the experience of doing so is anticipated with a fever. Milton, keyboardist Joss Van Wilder, bassist Trev, guitarist Paul Roberts and drummer Daniel Harvey point out that the devil is a bad influence, knowing that “the devil’s not far and he’s testing us,” but it’s not going to change the way they’re hoping to live this thing out.