Luv Damage
Philly’s Dr. Dog Lights A Psychedelic Brushfire With We All Belong
originally published June 13, 2007
Ryan Collerd
Dr. Dog
Don’t let Philadelphia area rockers Dr. Dog fool you. They’re not British, and they don’t intentionally sound like a mash up between Mott the Hoople, Pavement and a dozen other motley melodic champs of days past. And they aren’t a shifty-eyed pack of vinyl seekers whose sound depends on what landed atop the community turntable that particular week.
Dr. Dog is, however, a young five-man band that’s belt-buckle deep in sharp melodic structure, big but invitingly warm anthems and seriously love-damaged lyrics. Since putting out 2005’s Easy Beat, they’ve also tightened things up considerably. Whereas much of that album made Dr. Dog’s Pet Sounds lineage a little more pronounced, the band’s latest We All Belong walks a topsy-turvy sidewalk littered with jagged, fuzzy guitar riffs, randomly broken hearts and, of course, some damn sweet vocal harmonies emerging from both the forefront and backdrop of the new songs.
“People do love to pick out the influences in our music,” says the band’s guitarist Toby Leaman. “It’s a little surprising and a little annoying at the same time. Annoying when people peg us as recordphiles directly trying to sound like some other band. We’re not really into making one part sound like it came from this obscure old band or something like that. I don’t know anybody who does that. But it is pretty interesting to see what people come up with, always telling us we’re into bands we don’t ever listen to.”
Founding bassist Leaman and vocalist/guitarist Scott McMicken, with keyboardist Zach Miller, drummer Justin Stens, and guitarist Sukey Jumps, make up Dr. Dog’s current membership. With around 20 or so interloping members having infiltrated their ranks over the years, it’s a little tough to keep track.
“Scott and I started playing together a long time back, probably about 14 years ago,” recalls Leaman. “He and I have always written together, and we were fortunate enough to most always have a four-track recorder around to play with. The harmonies are just a way to make the songs a little bigger, a little more interesting. Our old guitarist, Doug O’Donnell, had played bluegrass music his whole life, and I would play upright bass with him on guitar and a guy on banjo. I was able to learn a lot of vocal harmonies that way, and, when they finally released Pet Sounds on CD some years back, there was a separate part with just the vocal tracks on it, and we would practice with that. It was definitely a concerted effort to learn vocal harmonies.”
To say Dr. Dog is not a vinyl-obsessed pack of nostalgists is mostly correct, though they do have soft spots for some of the AOR biggies. The Pet Sounds harmonies Leaman and McMicken cultivated early on pop up in sunnier selections like “My Old Ways” and “Weekend” from the new album. The sparse, woozy “Die, Die, Die” sounds like the greatest miserable breakup song Lennon and McCartney never wrote, with McMicken croaking “I don’t wanna die in your arms, I just wanna die” over tipsy slide guitar and drums, while the fade out/fade in between “Keep a Friend” and “Alaska” sets the stage for an undoubtedly cathartic eight-or-so minutes of stage time. The guys in Dr. Dog may build certain sections of their house from found parts, but they’re also mapping out a hook-filled, analog-friendly - and flat-out enjoyable - sound of their own that makes even the chilliest heartbroken lyric reverberate with warmth.
“We just really went for it whole hog on the new album,” says Leaman. “We were trying to get a live-in-the-room sound, which is totally untrue, because just about everything on there is overdubbed. Having a big tape machine, like the 24-track that we used, just lends itself to creating a warm sound. Just about everything was plugged straight into the board. When you’ve worked a lot on a little eight-track machine, there’s not really the luxury of doing it full band. We’ve just gotten so used to overdubs, so I think it’s what we’re best at. Plus, trying to put all these different pieces together without any overdubs could’ve certainly created a horrible mess instead!”
WHO: Dr. Dog, The Empties, Apollo Sunshine
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Wednesday, June 13
HOW MUCH: $8
A Common Interest In Sound
Maserati Revives Its Psychedelic Post-Rock On Inventions For The New Season
originally published June 13, 2007
Adam Bueb
Maserati
Instrumental rock bands can be uniquely suspect. With the exception of some great surf instrumentals and the early output of Athens' own Love Tractor, the very term conjures up some of the more noodley and indulgent excesses imaginable. Why is it, then, that Maserati is a band that has been, for nearly eight years, almost beyond reproach? It’s not my familiarity with the members - full disclosure: guitarist Coley Dennis and I work together - it's because of the the band's history and perseverance.
Back in 2000, Maserati's self-released debut album 37:29:24 was emotionally charged and a fresh respite from the dying dog of third-wave emo that was limping around town. A few years back it was because they were keeping the course following the 2002 release of The Language of Cities, and staying surprisingly original in a rapidly crowding instrumental world. And now in 2007, it’s because the band's newest album Inventions For The New Season, out this week on Temporary Residence Ltd [see Record Reviews] showcases a band with musical maturity, taste, highly selective restraint and razor-sharp sensibilities.
Although the band's permanent lineup stands as Coley Dennis (guitar), Matt Cherry (guitar), Jerry Fuchs (drums) and Steve Scarborough (bass), Maserati's current touring lineup has pinch-hitters guitarist Josh McCauley (A.Armada) standing in for Cherry and bassist Chris McNeal (ex-Paper Lions, Teenage Methlab) replacing Scarborough.
Flagpole spoke recently with Dennis, freshly back from several tours - down the East Coast as well as over in Europe, where Maserati sold out a number of shows, particularly in Germany - to talk about the new album and the band's plans for the future.
- Flagpole
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Let's talk a little about Maserati's recording. How much of the material is written before you head into the studio? Since the band is physically separated, what's the writing process like?
- Coley Dennis
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A lot of the material for this record [was from when] Matt and I got together over various weekends last year and got some ideas together. We would have Jerry fly down for a long weekend every three months or so and we would all flesh out the ideas to see what would work and would not. One of the songs, "Show Me The Season," grew out of a jam during rehearsal and "This Is A Sight We Had One Day From The High Mountain" was an idea that Jerry wanted to try while we were in the studio and everyone else just added the little things that filled out the song.
- Flagpole
-
Inventions For The New Season seems to be a crossroads album for the band. That is, it will likely gain new fans, but where do you see Maserati going with its sound after this one?
- Coley Dennis
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That’s hard to say. We all definitely want to evolve our sound and move forward, but it's hard to say where exactly it will go until we start writing the material. We’ve been talking to friends of ours from Pittsburgh, [Relapse Records recording artists] Zombi, about doing a split record so that’s what we're looking to work on next. I’d definitely like to add some more ambient material on the next record we do, though.
- Flagpole
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The members of Athens band Love Tractor used to complain that no one took them seriously as a rock-and-roll band because they were an instrumental band. Have you ever felt Maserati was unfairly tagged with the "art-rock" label?
- Coley Dennis
-
No, not at all. I think it's fairly common today for bands to not have vocals, unlike in the early '80s when Love Tractor started. I think also we’re not too far out in the experimental area, so we’ve kinda avoided the tag as "art rock."
- Flagpole
-
Since the music is never tied to the verse-chorus-verse structure, how do you guys prevent the band from sliding into wanky prog-rock territory?
- Coley Dennis
-
I think we definitely have certain things we like to achieve when writing songs, so that keeps us on track. We’re always trying not to repeat ourselves in song structures. So, I think with that balance we're pretty good about keeping things pretty focused.
- Flagpole
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Can you talk a little bit about how the band wound up on Temporary Residence?
- Coley Dennis
-
Jerry has been friends with Jeremy Devine who runs TRL for a few years now. We’ve all met him before as well, so when it came time for us to shop the record around he was interested. He really loved the record and knew we were wanting to support this one by touring a lot, so we were fortunate. We all love and respect a lot of the bands that are on TRL and look forward to working with them.
- Flagpole
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There's a very real possibility that Maserati will wind up being embraced by the jam band fans of acts like Particle, STS9, etc. What makes Maserati markedly different from other loud, instrumental and expansive rock bands?
- Coley Dennis
-
I think, if anything, we take a bit of a different approach with our sound than a lot of instrumental bands at the moment. I think we all feel kinda bored with the quiet-loud-quiet formula, so we're trying a lot of different approaches, like having a lot of ambience as well as using more traditional writing methods.
- Flagpole
-
When do you know a piece of music is finished? Without any set rules to follow, what rules have you incorporated on your own?
- Coley Dennis
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I think we try not to clutter up the songs too much. We all feel that it's as important to not play as it is to play. Once we're feeling pretty comfortable with the structure and playing the song live, I think we consider it finished.
- Flagpole
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The moods on the new album shift substantially. Maserati can be very dark but also quite uplifting - "Show Me The Season," specifically. It's a very physical music in that, if one listens to the tracks in order, you don't get the catharsis without going through the dark.
- Coley Dennis
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Yeah, I think once all the songs were finished in the studio we definitely wanted to create a mood with the album. Everyone was on the same page with how we wanted it to move. The flow and feel of a record is just as important as the songs themselves.
- Flagpole
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After the album's U.S. release what will the band do?
- Coley Dennis
-
We’re hoping to get out to the West Coast at the end of the year. The only concrete plans after this tour is to do a tour of Australia and focus on writing in November and December.
WHO: Maserati, Summerbirds in the Cellar, A.Armada
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Friday, June 15
HOW MUCH: $7
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