Office Dog
Spiel
NEW WEST
Office Dog is a band out of New Zealand whose music style is an amalgam of early-’90s alt-rock influences such as Blur, Built to Spill, and Sonic Youth (not to mention Dinosaur Jr., for whom they’ll be opening on the band’s upcoming Where You Been anniversary tour)—as well as more modern iterations of those sounds, as interpreted by IDLES and Parquet Courts. A critically acclaimed solo artist in his own right, frontman Kane Strang formed the project to collaborate with other musicians from the local Auckland scene after a decade of releasing his own material, first working with his touring drummer Mitchell Innes, then bringing bassist Rassani Tolovaa into the fold.
Office Dog’s new album Spiel is a fuzzy, explosive, and melodic ride, a promising debut for the up-and-coming Kiwi rockers. Strang’s languid vocals and lyrics pair well with the driving rhythm provided by Tolovaa and Innes. Opening track “Shade” perfectly eases us into the album’s emotional core through its initial bittersweet chord progression backed by Strang’s pensive lyrics: “Face to face in the maze / Strange to not be afraid.” After a few minutes of introspective singing, everything is thrown into chaos as the track shifts its tone and rhythm and transforms into a cacophony of triumphant noise. At the same time, there’s a thread of uncertainty, like trying to find your way to an unknown destination without a map.
The album slows down with the mellow but catchy “Antidote,” contrasting the heaviness of the previous cut. It’s a tasty two-song combo that keeps you hypnotically attached to your headphones and delivers kinetic energy to help push through the two following tepid tracks—the weakest section of the album. Lead single “Big Air,” which ends that dry streak, is probably Spiel’s strongest track, as it successfully conveys numbness, a sort of impasse of the psyche, lyrically and musically with its repetitive progression and near-monotone vocal delivery of lines like “I can’t feel nobody else / I can’t feel no pain.” It’s also downright catchy.
Ultimately, Spiel is strongest when the songs are melancholic, pensive, pounding, and distorted. The record is constructed well, and supplies the listener with satisfying ear candy that will satiate a desire for ’90s-inspired alt-rock. And hopefully it shines a bigger spotlight on the promising local Auckland music scene for those of us here in the States.
