Above all else, Fat Dog decide to the bit. On a moist morning in Austin, Texas, the five-piece roll as much as an out of doors photograph studio decked out in a jumble sale-like mixture of outfits: from a shiny child blue tracksuit to mountaineering boots and chino shorts, the south Londoners walk a fantastic line between zeitgeisty (‘gorpcore’, anybody?) and kitschy. Their collective determination to embrace town’s unofficial motto of ‘Keep Austin Weird’ is clearly no joke.
With a style for fluffy hats and a shy twinkle in his eye, frontman Joe Love stands quietly within the nook, taking in his environment: a junkyard suffering from rusty push bikes and overgrown crops. He’s one thing of a wallflower upon first introduction, permitting his garments to do extra of the speaking. His shyness, nevertheless, might be attested to the best way he describes the south Londoners’ first journey to the US as an “overload” of latest sights and sounds.
Over the 2 days that NME spends in Fat Dog’s orbit, watching them win over crowds in huge outside areas, the band make their early impressions of Austin loud and clear. As we walk between venues, bassist Ben Harris poses for photographs on desolate avenue corners, laughing as he compares town’s city sprawl to “something straight out of Grand Theft Auto.” Even when drummer Johnny Hutch forgets to convey his signature German Shepherd masks to the Cover shoot, there’s little drama: everybody appears too distracted by random paraphernalia that surrounds us.
Having flown in from a sold-out present in New York, the band are on the town for a fast run of 12 offshoot SXSW gigs, roadtesting new materials just like the spacey, Flaming Lips-esque ‘I Am The King’ or the extra rambunctious ‘Running’, which includes a mid-song dance break. “We’re playing 6000 gigs per day at the moment,” says keyboardist Chris Hughes as we sit down with Love to recharge over a lunch of smoothies and tacos. “But that’s what it’s all about: chaos.”
Watching Fat Dog carry out ought to set off a visceral response in any young music fan. Love is the central determine of Fat Dog, a 6ft one thing chief who can command consideration intensely sufficient to scare the dwelling daylights out of any passive viewers members. Their mixture of electronica and punk is an adrenaline-pumping expertise: one which makes you’re feeling like a teen experiencing the bedlam of the moshpit for the primary time. They possess all of the promise, charisma and youthful abandon that new bands are purported to have.
“When we were doing opening slots for other artists, we got a lot of hate from people because they didn’t want to see the support act ‘out-do’ anyone,” says Love, earlier than Hughes takes over. “When we toured with Viagra Boys (in January final 12 months), we had this man come as much as us who mentioned, ‘You were supposed to warm the crowd up, but instead your lead singer was an arrogant guy, a tiny little prick…’
“You should make that a pull quote,” Love tells NMEknocking the picnic desk together with his fist. It’s this mix of quiet confidence and myth-making that has garnered Fat Dog a fanbase often called The Kennel, borne from the oddballs that inhabit influential Brixton venue The Windmill, which has given mathy rockers like Black Midi and Squid their begin over the years.
“What we’ve got as a band is special – it’s an amazing feeling” – Chris Hughes
What units Fat Dog aside from their forebears, nevertheless, is their frivolity. Early reveals noticed them don nun costumes and karate fits, the latter which Love nonetheless carries round on tour. Last August, when NME noticed the band carry out at Reading Festival, stood metres from us have been a gaggle of young boys waving a do-it-yourself signal that learn ‘Fat Dog are for the kids’. Much like their Domino labelmates Wet Leg, they’re an emblem of post-pandemic guitar music, with songs that inhabit the warmth, vitality and ecstasy of basement venues.
“We’ve had crowds who are clearly thinking, ‘What is this?’,” says Hughes. “When we toured with Sports Team (in late 2022), it felt like we could have a playful competition every night. We could tire people out so that they would stop dancing for the headliner because they’d be throwing up or out of breath.”
This status is already famend to the purpose that final week (April 18), the band performed the 1500-capacity Electric Brixton off the again of two singles. They’d even tried to report their forthcoming debut album to tape. “We gave it our all in the studio for five hours,” says Love. “But then we listened to it back and were like, “Fuck?! Is that what we sound like live?’”
Hughes continues: “When we play live, there is a lot of loudness, sweat and energy. Like, you can’t smell an album.” Well, if the brand new report had a scratch-and-sniff characteristic, what wouldn’t it be? “Dog shit and desperation,” he counters.
Though they’ve refined their imaginative and prescient over time, the freedom-seeking spirit that outlined Fat Dog’s early days can nonetheless be heard of their music. A teenage EDM fan that quickly turned involved in heavier acts like Fat White Family and The Intergalactic Republic of Kongo, Love would frequent The Windmill in the hunt for extra new, unfamiliar sounds. “I was hanging around at 16, not even old enough to be in the room,” he says, laughing. “But no one asked questions if you were playing a gig.”
Having labored with different lineups, Love ultimately recruited Harris, Hutch and jazz saxophonist Morgan Wallace shortly after lockdown ended. Hughes, in the meantime, “totally bullshitted” his means into Fat Dog; he instructed Love that he might play the viola so as to earn his place – earlier than occurring eBay to purchase a second-hand instrument and trying to show himself the fundamentals. The band have been making their very own lore earlier than they’d even carried out collectively.
“I was a fan before I joined Fat Dog,” says Hughes. “I was going through a breakup and one night, I had a little cry and a dance at one of their gigs, and then thought to myself, ‘Fuck it, let’s do this.” He turns to face Love head-on. “At the start, you hated me – you couldn’t look me in the eye during our first rehearsal! But I don’t blame you, I was a chancer.” Love responds: “I really like The Windmill, but it’s like how I feel towards America: do I like the people?” He throws a smirk in our path. Point taken.
Released final August, Fat Dog’s debut single ‘King Of The Slugs’ sprang seemingly out of nowhere like a jack-in-the-box. A riot of snaking rhythms that rapidly offers solution to a seven minute-long electroclash freakout, it’s playful sufficient to be wrongfully dismissed as novelty – however has helped to distance the band from their extra self-serious friends. “A fan once described Fat Dog as sounding like an episode of Black Mirror. I’d take that as a compliment,” Hutch jokes after we regroup with the remainder of the band afterward.
You can solely think about the collaborative toiling essential to execute the monitor’s tangles of vicious guitars and accelerated drumming. Love admits that strain of engaged on such an formidable association – which had additionally already been aired dozens of occasions stay – turned an excessive amount of too quickly, to the purpose the place his girlfriend purchased him a ‘You Tried’ badge after a spherical of failed studio classes.
A band-wide feeling of exhaustion quickly spurred a transfer in the direction of working with producer James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Jessie Ware), whom they met through their label home at Domino, through the early phases of recording their debut. Bringing a trusted hand into the inside circle would quickly alleviate the strain of capturing the myriad sides of their sound – and permit Love to seek out humour and reduction of their extra experimental moments.
“I was having a conversation with James and he was like, ‘Do you like ska?’ So I responded with, ‘Yeah, I guess… but I don’t want to be the new Madness,” Love remembers. “That’s what someone said to us after a gig in Ipswich: ‘You know what you sound like? Madness from the future.’”
Fat Dog’s most excitable member, Hughes cracks up each time Love tells an anecdote, one other being that he as soon as caught Hutch sneakily watching an episode of The Simpsons on his telephone whereas performing. He describes an intuitive bond together with his bandmates, one which has been a whole lot of gigs within the making and like entering into “a totally different world”, as Wallace put it in a recent tour diary entry for Loud Women.
“When we play live, there is a lot of loudness, sweat and energy” – Chris Hughes
“What we’ve got as a band is special,” says Hughes. “I hear things from my friends who are in other groups, and there just seems to be constant animosity elsewhere. We get these moments where everything lines up: sometimes, we all look at each other on stage, and quietly recognise that we’re playing a really good gig. It’s an amazing feeling.”
Later that night, we observe the band to at least one final present: a midnight set at Esther Follie’s, the place the ground is lacquered with years of spillages and the ceiling hangs somewhat too low for consolation. It feels nearer to the dingy golf equipment that they’re used to ripping aside again home – and the band are champing on the bit to let unfastened, as if there’s an additional cost within the air.
After tearing by way of a thumping rendition of ‘All The Same’, they grow to be conscious of some shouting from outdoors. The noise will get nearer and extra strident. Behind the stage there’s a massive window, by way of which some passers-by have stopped to look at Fat Dog, dancing and cheering alongside as in the event that they’re within the room with us. Love leans ahead of their path, gently chuckles to himself, and waves again. Perhaps no person’s extra stunned to seek out them gaining new followers on the opposite facet of the world than the band themselves.
Listen to Fat Dog’s unique playlist to accompany The Cover under on Spotify and right here on Apple Music
Words: Sophie Williams
Photography: Sam Keeler
Label: Domino Records
