'You Can Feel It Shake Your Ribcage': Fat Dog on debut album 'WOOF.'
Tuesday, 10 September 2024
Written by Rishi Shah
Photo: Pooneh Ghana
Few bands would dare to announce a headline show at the 2,300-capacity O2 Forum in London’s Kentish Town with just three songs to their name. Unless you’ve become the next Chappell Roan or Sabrina Carpenter overnight, any sensible promoter would laugh at such a proposition. Unless you’re Fat Dog, that is. In the case of the mind-bending dance-punks, it simply felt like the natural next step of their journey. It’s happening on November 23, following up a wider UK and Ireland tour in support of their recently released, hotly anticipated debut album ‘WOOF.’.
As the latest band to storm out of The Windmill scene in Brixton — following everyone from Shame to Black Country, New Road and the recently departed Black Midi — Fat Dog’s wild fanbase, dubbed ‘The Kennel’, have already helped sell out shows at Scala and Electric Brixton. “I wasn't initially aware that [The Windmill] had some context behind it,” says saxophonist and keyboardist Morgan Wallace, reached over Zoom just a few days before the LP’s arrival.
Having moved to London from Exeter in 2019 to study jazz at university, Morgan finds herself as part of the venue’s greatest recent success story, one that is arguably already eclipsing the levels reached by bands who came before them. “I saw artists get big, but it was a different scene to The Windmill scene — I was a lot more in the jazz scene,” she says. “But I started playing there with my own project, and after you play there a bit, people tell you about the hype and history.”
Since Morgan joined Fat Dog, they’ve infamously held back music and stretched out that hype, breaking the tension when the seven-minute King Of The Slugs arrived last year. Now, their James Ford-produced debut has arrived in full form, featuring techno-punk rager Running, feral head bopper Wither and the hypnotic All The Same. Morgan took Stereoboard behind their wild live show (with more UK shows to come in 2025) and the inception of the album.
How are you feeling in your first ever album release week?
It’s strange, because we've been performing the album for so long. It almost felt freakier when we released King Of The Slugs. I find it strange that people will hear it in places that we’ve never been to before — people in Japan already know we exist. It feels like we’re in the 1500s or something: ‘How can you know I exist, if I’ve never visited there?’ That’s kind of surreal.
Take us back to those early Fat Dog shows — what do you remember from them?
We played the songs for a while, before there were any plans that an album might even exist. It almost became a bit of a meme, [that we’ve] never released anything. We did a support tour with Sports Team, which was quite a big one — we played the Roundhouse. Doing those sorts of shows felt really exciting, but we had no songs out at all. It almost seemed like a challenge, ‘How long can you go without putting music on Spotify?’
What tipped the balance for you to drop King Of The Slugs?
Joe [Love, frontman] says he's not a perfectionist — maybe he wants to use another word, but he’s a perfectionist, I would say. We did about 20 different versions of King Of the Slugs, just trying different things. [Initially] it didn’t feel like it sounded good, and we wanted all the songs to sound really perfect in the studio.
There are so many big hitters on the album, do you have a personal favourite?
The songs have real names now, but I still call it Intro in my brain — it’s called Vigilante. There's the drop, halfway through. I use it to [judge] ‘Is this a good set or a bad set?’. It’s a nice marker at the start. Chris [Hughes, synths] wrote the monologue at the start of Vigilante, and it’s Neil Bell, who’s an actor, performing it. We did a live session on Steve Lamacq’s 6 Music show, and we got Neil in to do the monologue. Some musicians, they just care about music. Actors are good because they care about giving a performance, so it's almost nicer to get them in for a live thing.
How did you feel when Joe first showed you the Vigilante drop?
We played it for the first time at The Windmill, and it doesn’t feel the same as when you’re in rehearsal. I was like, ‘Oh shit, nice.’ From that moment onwards, I realised what the sets can be like. You can feel it shake your ribcage, when the bass comes in.
You’ve toured non-stop over the past few years, but are there any standout live shows?
We did an out-store show in Manchester recently, in the YES basement. That almost felt like an early Windmill show. I had to faff around with something on the laptop, Joe had to do some chatting. It was nice to fill the gaps and improvise a bit, and you can see the crowd close up.
How have you coped with the intensity of the schedule, sometimes playing multiple shows in one day?
When we went to SXSW in March, we did three or four shows per day. There are a lot of people at SXSW with lanyards on — sometimes people don't want to dance — but we’d have a show at 2am and then another at 11am. It felt like normal life had gone away, and you're in some weird loop. The Peace Stage at 2am on Thursday was my favourite Glastonbury show. We'd done one earlier that day at Strummerville, which is on a hill. Because the stage is at the bottom, a wave of people ended up falling on us...it gets your adrenaline up a bit, trying not to get crushed by everyone.
How are you feeling about graduating to the bigger stages, be it in London or across the festival circuit?
Sound-wise, it does work better in a closed room, because it’s techno sounds, and we’ve got a big kick, which sort of washes away into the air when you’re doing big stages. I'm so used to doing gigs almost every day that I wouldn't say I get nervous for many shows, but the two big London ones we’ve done, all of us were nervous beforehand. I think feeling nervous is good, because you know that you still care. It does give you a different type of adrenaline.
The album comes in at just nine songs — have you got any more music in the works?
We’re all aware we've got to do the second album at some point. Actually, all of us are thinking of going in a totally random new direction, coming in with a chill album, or something. We’ve been doing this vibe for a while now — it might be nice to do country music, or something. The first song that we did at Electric Brixton, we just never played ever again. It’s called Bosh — it [samples] Big John, the guy from Instagram. I wish we got hold of him, maybe that's a good plan for Kentish Town, we could actually get him to do that song again.
Fat Dog’s ‘WOOF.’ is out now through Domino.
Fat Dog Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Thu November 07 2024 - DUBLIN Grand Social
Fri November 08 2024 - BELFAST Empire Music Hall
Sat November 09 2024 - GLASGOW Stereo
Sun November 10 2024 - LEEDS Project House
Tue November 12 2024 - NOTTINGHAM Rescue Rooms
Wed November 13 2024 - MANCHESTER Band on the Wall
Thu November 14 2024 - SHEFFIELD Crookes Social Club
Fri November 15 2024 - BRISTOL Thekla
Sat November 16 2024 - BIRMINGHAM Mama Roux's
Sun November 17 2024 - CARDIFF Clwb Ifor Bach
Thu November 21 2024 - SOUTHAMPTON Papillon
Fri November 22 2024 - BRIGHTON Patterns
Sat November 23 2024 - LONDON O2 Forum Kentish Town
Thu February 13 2025 - NORWICH Waterfront
Fri February 14 2025 - BRIGHTON Chalk
Sat February 15 2025 - EXETER Exeter Phoenix
Sun February 16 2025 - OXFORD O2 Academy Oxford
Wed February 19 2025 - BRISTOL SWX
Thu February 20 2025 - SOUTHAMPTON 1865
Fri February 21 2025 - BIRMINGHAM XOYO
Sun February 23 2025 - LIVERPOOL Jacaranda Baltic
Wed February 26 2025 - NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE Boiler Shop
Fri February 28 2025 - GLASGOW Queen Margaret Union
Sat March 01 2025 - MANCHESTER New Century
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