Fat Dog
Cancel Me (I’m Tired)
DOMINO
Fat Dog is a self-described “electro-punk-art-pop-rock’n’roll-space-country” act out of London that established a canine motif from their outset in 2023—and they’re sticking to it. From the title of their 2024 debut, to new song names like “Bad Dog,” to canine-themed album covers, this is a band that’s as loyal to its conceptual imagery as, well, you can fill in the rest. The pack of wild animals that make up Fat Dog are frontman Joe Love, keyboardist Chris Hughes, saxophonist Morgan Wallace, drummers Ellis Dickson and Dillon Harrison, bassist Michael Dunlop, and string arranger Jed Bevington. And their mission is simple: to prowl around for morsels of music that other bands may have discarded, but which taste good to them.
Fat Dog are still in their puppy years—the most fun, but also the most unruly—and that playful rambunctiousness runs throughout Cancel Me (I'm Tired). Defying the parenthetical in that album title, Fat Dog are disobedient when it comes to sticking to genre. “Call It What You Want,” a song in the middle of the pack that is the album’s track list, is a synth-centric thumper infectious to its core. It’s followed by “Snakes,” which features whistling, acoustic guitars, and a Spaghetti-Western flavor that you’d swear was crafted by a different band than the one that made the song before. That’s followed by the hyperactive, club-ready “Bad Dog,” which the band should’ve named “Rabid Dog” due to its erratic nature. (If you think I’m beating the dog theme like a dead horse, point—or wag—your finger at the band. They even incorporate samples of dogs barking and howling in that last tune.)
At this point, you may be asking yourself a fair question: “Why?” What purpose does the obsession with dogs serve? What is the band striving for? And does Fat Dog even qualify as a band when their unpredictable shifts in sound result in what some might argue is an incoherent album? Well, here’s the skinny: Cancel Me (I'm Tired) is a reflection of a world gone mad, at a time when no one seems to be bothering to snap a leash onto its collar. Fat Dog don’t seem to be political, at least not overtly, but their thematic veerings from addiction to AI to aliens to S&M capture the oversaturation of anxiety that all of us—sane or not—are living through. Fat Dog’s response is that if we’re forced to exist in the here and now, we might as well run wild before the dog catcher eventually nabs us.
