Dr. Dog – Dr. Dog
We Buy Gold Records
Saying an album was intended to sound like a live recording can be a banal bit of marketing speak, a fatuous cliché that could mean almost anything. So when Dr. Dog singer-guitarist Scott McMicken says he wanted their self-titled 11th album to sound “soulful and live-feeling,” it takes work to find the heart of what they’re driving at.
The comment embodies the highs and lows of Dr. Dog. The band—over six years removed from their last studio album and three years from their “final tour”—emerged from a rural Pennsylvania cabin with an album that, at times, rekindles what is alluring about their influence-on-the-sleeve throwback rock.
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The four-song opening run—including the foot-stomping “Authority” and coltish “Fat Dog”—joyfully revels at an intersection of blues, soul, psychedelia, and Beatles-adjacent harmonies. At its best, Dr. Dog offers ear-worm melodies that cascade through verses with the verve of the bouncing ball in ‘90s Disney Sing-Along VHS tapes. Like a light version of the verses in R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” songs like “Talk Is Cheap” and “Lost Ones” stick in your head sans lyrics.
The longing for “live-sounding” records may be impossibly broad, but, in spurts, the album holds a touch of the closeness and loose cadence of a convivial, sweaty dive bar full of friends sipping two-for-one PBRs on a Monday night. As is always the case with Dr. Dog, it also telegraphs a wistful nostalgia for the raw edges of playful, uncynical late ‘60s/early ‘70s rock.
That nostalgic earnestness can be effective, even soberly hopeful, when all the pieces come together. It can also read as sappy and uninspiring: “You and me, we turning into us / Now I know that I’m alive,” they sing on their banjo-led, M. Ward-accompanied “Love Struck.” Dr. Dog is an overall uneven listen. While it opens strong, with the promise of retro-loving rock with big melodies, the album progresses into a listless run of short songs that feels bereft of standouts and add little to the overall picture.
Dr. Dog can capture the irreverence and fun of their influences, but the Dylan-esque rambling and McCartney-indebted harmonies ultimately click too briefly, only inducing nostalgia for the moments when Dr. Dog shines. – GRADE: C+
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