Years ago, your writer would often find himself assailed in his East Lancashire locale by the sorts of people who knew about things. Pep talks from working lads who paid their taxes, through which the silk-scarved, soft-shoed likes of me would finally be brought into the Real World. A particularly tiresome instance would regularly be doled out by a fellow who worked in the motor trade: “you see, the thing is,” was his constant opening salvo. What “the thing” was, was never explained nor needed to be; it was there, like a regimental standard, stuck in the mud to rally round any argument. Another wingnut once collared me unawares at a tray pie supper, to opine about England’s chances at France 1998. “We’ve just got to win it, it stands to reason.” Stands to reason… Another meaningless statement, another thing, like “the thing”.
The reason these memories floated up from the sump tank I had hoped they had drowned in (alongside the Sven-Göran Eriksson song, Captain Tom, the Macarena, drivetime radio, the bloody 2012 Olympics) is that, with WOOF, Fat Dog have made a proper, “old fashioned British pop record” that takes tabloid notions of who “we Brits” are and gives them a proper wobble. The detritus is picked up and gaffer taped into a tough, enervating set of Tunes that would – if we were back in 1990 – be the anthems of student bars “up and down the land.”
This is no bad thing, at all. I’ve spent the last week happily singing along to the likes of ‘Running’ and punching the air to ‘All The Same’. WOOF charms mainly by the dint of its barefaced cheek: a record like this has been long overdue, especially since the pandemic. Experienced live, the band are fantastic fun; as close to Fagin’s urchin gang as you would wish, a playground – with lots of smells and lots of noise – amped to 90 dB. This rambunctious, youthful spirit transfers immediately to the opener, ‘Vigilante’, where singer Joe Love soliloquises from the battlements of his own imagined Elsinore. His delivery has an MES-like trickster note, which neatly deflates any sense of pompousness, and sets us up for the KLF-style crunch that powers the rest of the track, and much of the rest of the album.
WOOF is a record that could only be made in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. One that, magpie-like, pilfers the styles, attitudes and assumptions that have powered these islands’ pop music over the past sixty years. Fat Dog tunes are made of the same sort of shiny, just-add-water musical gloop that Flowered Up, Carter USM, KLF and the Mondays brought into the mainstream thirty years ago. ‘All The Same’, with its thick, slapping beat, is the feral runt of a litter seeded by ‘Wrote for Luck’ and ‘What Time Is Love?’. It curses, Caliban-like, and then buggers off without a by-your-leave, like the Fool in King Lear.
These thumping outsider tunes stoke a sense of defiance and camaraderie, too. Fat Dog trade in the sort of British togetherness that slips through the mainstream net. The fevered charm of the cult of the scorned. The cover, with its “high rises and terraces” trope, also hints at the “forgotten voice” of the common people, the serving classes who have their needs explained to them. All of them ready to be swept up with this new cult songbook. Titles like ‘Vigilante’, ‘Closer to God’, or ‘I Am the King’ leave little to the imagination. The sloganeering is similarly broad brush. “Wake me up when the shooting starts” on ‘Running’ is the kind of meaningless slogan that you can’t help repeating. Elsewhere, on ‘Wither’, we hear of “the barrel of a gun”. You see, the thing is…
The record also plays out as a lurid pantomime. ‘Wither’ is a classic cops-and-robbers chase where rave, ska, swelling gameshow synths and the beep of a heart monitor all add to the mix until a zither – of all things – draws the track to a close. The feeling of release the zither conjures up is akin only to puking in the jakes after a skinful. For its part, ‘Clowns’ is both a parody of urban pop (the vocoder lead sounding like slops in a bucket) and a heartfelt appeal for sanity. A piano, taking the pressure out of the track, acts like a mate pulling a drunk out of a bar, before the bouncers jump on them.
Like actors in a pantomime, the musicians trade in a near constant switching of masks. ‘Closer to God’ is a 00s-style rabble rouser that somehow overheats and becomes a manic appeal to The Lord with all forms of East-meets-West stylings thrown at it. Similar can be said of the musical tropes used to power the core thespianism of ‘King of The Slugs’, ones that could have been nicked from the soundtrack of Lawrence of Arabia. It wouldn’t be a British record without a weepy moment, though, and we are served that with ‘I Am The King’, which trades in sorrowful strings, choirs and drops that never drop.
WOOF is as flashy, bright, and beautifully tasteless a record as you could wish for. Warmed up to room temperature and served on a tray to steady the brimming plate, it’s a sonic Meal Deal we should all gorge on.
