Review
Dr. Dog
Be The Void

These days, few musicians are fortunate enough to have released seven consistently pleasing albums, thrive on live performance, partake in the DIY method of surviving making music for a living and have a blast doing so. The Philadelphia bred Dr. Dog manage to do just this.

Anyone can compare a modern band drawing influences from 60’s and 70’s baroque pop and doo-wop to more prestigious acts such as The Beatles and The Beach Boys. Aside from their stylistic note taking from earlier acts, this is a group who create a tone of their own. Ask anyone familiar enough with their back catalogue and they’ll most likely agree; Dr. Dog sounds like Dr. Dog.

Its no surprise that Be The Void, the group’s second album released on Epitaph sister label, Anti- Records, follows suit with this signature sound. These are twelve songs that pick up right where 2010’s Shame, Shame left off. Opening track “Lonesome” begins as a loose, psych-folk tune, sporting slide riffs and spontaneously shouting “Hey!”

The ensuing “That Old Black Hole” reflects the sort of on-your-toes rhythms fluent in the song writing of guitarists Scott McMicken and Frank McElroy. It’s pop-sensibility makes for a great first impression of Be The Void. “How Long Must I Wait” is a more spread out finger-snapper, bobbing through steady minor chords and led by one of the album’s more favorable melodies.

“Get Away” features one of the band’s most folk-laden choruses, complete with harmonic hums and djembe drum rhythms, supported by violin and strings. Though a delicate tune, bassist Toby Leaman depicts his desire for a better life elsewhere. This longing is evident not only in his weathered crooning, but also in the lyrics, “Oh no, I cant walk around/With my feet off the ground/And when they hit, we’ll run away”, before breaking into the broad aforementioned measure.

There’s fun in the latter half of the record, found in Leaman’s whiskey-soaked howls in “Vampire”, the two-step and fiery tempo in “Over Here, Over There” and fuzzy, future-esque “Warrior Man.” To wrap things up, McMicken closes with “Turning of the Century”, a country-blues number packed with enough twang to have you reaching for the straw hat and suspenders.

Is this Dr. Dog’s best album? Who gives a fuck. It’s another splendid chronicle in the timeline of a band who are utterly timeless. By now, these guys have earned their respected reputation as one endearing, workhorse of a band. One can rest assured, that with each and every offering, these hounds are giving it their all.