Deformer - Dog Day

Deformer

Dog Day
FunDog Records.


SCQ Rating: 80%

Anyone who has caught Dog Day live knows that the punk spirit inhabiting the fringes of their gloomy, controlled records frays apart onstage. From statesmen of gloom to hell-bent revelers in a snap, the band’s raw performances became expositions on how to hear an album like Concentration or Elder Schoolhouse in an aggressive new light. So when this spring’s Scratches EP all but erased the contrast to Dog Day’s duality by presenting their noise-band rep on record, complete in raw recordings and compressed textures, it seemed as though the newly minted duo (core members Seth Smith and Nancy Urich) was self-imposing itself into a corner.

Deformer, despite bearing a similar home-recorded approach as Scratches EP, promptly incinerates those fears with a line-up of killer tunes with real songwriting depth. From the rallying call of ‘Daydream’ and rhythmic intensity of ‘Part Girl’ to ‘I Wanna Mix’’s autumnal guitar tones, Smith and Urich get the obvious out of the way; that losing half the members of their band hasn’t diminished the restless creativity at the heart of Dog Day. And as Deformer branches into menacing riffs (‘Positive’) and affecting atmospherics (‘Mr Freeze’), it becomes clear that the Nova Scotia-based duo has stepped further, somehow channeling the unhinged spirit of a band basking in the limelight for the first time. The scrappy yet magnetic energy displayed on Deformer seeks not to pedestal its qualities on Dog Day’s string of successful releases, as most artists would be content doing, but instead provides a blank slate – for both fans and themselves. It’s the same Dog Day you’ve always loved, just hungrier.

On a personal note, I’d be remiss not to mention how much I enjoyed Dog Day as a fearsome foursome. Part of the reason Concentration became Skeleton Crew Quarterly’s Top Album of 2009 was because the instrumentation posed so many intriguing questions; elegant bits of distortion melting into one another and songwriting that benefitted from different pens to the paper. No one really doubted Smith and Urich’s roles as the key ingredients to that stew but I’d wager a lot of fans hardly expected Deformer to make such a fine point of it. A passionate and ferocious return.

Dog Day - Scratches by Noyes Records

Scratches EP - Dog Day

Scratches EP

Dog Day
Noyes Records.

SCQ Rating: 75%

When Dog Day trekked through Eastern and Central Canada last summer, it was their first tour as a duo. After a ferocious set in Ottawa that August, Seth Smith admitted he and Nancy Urich had but a month to rebuild their live-presence, meaning that keyboards were suddenly a tossed-out luxury and Urich (who normally owns bass duties) needed to learn the drums pronto. The haphazard sense of urgency that brought their tour to fruition was radiantly displayed in their live-show dynamic, as Smith and Urich fed off each other with an insatiable punk-rock thirst.

With that memory in mind, Scratches EP sounds like a logical smattering of Dog Day’s gloominess, but pared down to its upbeat and sinister core. The gritty guitar of ‘Scratches’ immediately stands out as something dangerously sovereign from the warped carnival keys that gave Concentration its spooky veneer; at once bare but encouraged, its revved up chords next to Urich’s drum-kit spark some wonderful racket. Following in this vein, ‘Belle’ tears through anxious verses wound so tight, only the odd guitar spasm or repeated chorus hook can peer above the rush.

The blunt speed of Scratches‘ arrangements mirrors Dog Day’s live presence, be it in their quartet-days or their recent duo shows, and captures that raw energy at its most combustible. That said, it’s worth mentioning that none of these songs come very close to breaking the three-minute mark. Even ‘Give Me Light’, which slows things down to highlight Smith’s glum quiver, sticks by its steady chug as opposed to branching off into new ideas. How these songs are meant to compliment or contrast Dog Day’s upcoming full-length, no one yet knows, but let’s hope Scratches EP’s home-recorded merits don’t completely eclipse the murky, hard-fought path they’d haunted over previous albums.

Shit Camera Exposé: Apollo Ghosts / Dog Day (Raw Sugar Café)

Years ago, SCQ decided not to review live shows because watching a band critically and attempting to translate the evening’s mood into a blog-post inevitably distracted me from savoring the moment and socializing.

Going to shows alone is different, though. Sure, you react strangely between sets on instinct, wandering the venue to keep occupied, fidgeting through your bag to avoid doing nothing. But there’s also a freedom when friends aren’t locking you in, shoulder-to-shoulder. Nothing prevents you from moving seats several times during a show, taking nonsense pictures with your shit camera, or viewing the venue and its happenings like an undisturbed fly on the wall. Maybe I want to review live shows after all. Introducing Shit Camera Exposé:

No sooner had I walked into Raw Sugar Café, nestled humbly in Ottawa’s Chinatown, when I was escorted out by a leaping, cape-adorned man and his small tribe of dancing fans. Meet Adrian Teacher, vocalist and guitarist for Apollo Ghosts, the Vancouver-based trio who opened the night's bill. Superhero façade aside, Teacher seemed to possess the energy of a grade-school educator (which he is...?), pointing out show-goers to participate, and after our impromptu jog around a Chinese pavilion out front, I caught how that vigor propelled the band’s performance.

Chugging through a tougher version of ‘To A Friend Who Has Been Through a War’ and dedicating ‘Salmon Capital’, their “prog-rock song if we could do prog-rock”, to Dog Day’s Seth Smith, Apollo Ghosts brought Mount Benson to life with all of that record’s quirky yelps and tight riffs. If you were aching for something brooding or insular, this set would’ve exiled you to the bar. Hell, if you got any closer to the stage, Teacher would’ve made you carry him throughout the band’s throw-down of ‘Things You Go Through’. I should know; I was responsible for his legs.

Drag that so much of the audience seemed oblivious to the material, though, as I typically had to prompt clapping after each song cause nobody knew how short these tracks are independently. No kidding, I kinda felt sorry for a lot of these onlookers, who were unable to mentally stitch Apollo Ghosts’ minute-long jams into the greater sequencing of Mount Benson's weirdo-majesty. Those in the know caught their contagious buoyancy straightaway and I was pleased to catch a few people carrying Mount Benson vinyl after the set.

No matter what show I attend, there’s always a chick wearing a red dress so tight she can hardly stand, yet dancing anyway. Raw Sugar Café had one of those, as well as several aside-worthy curios that seemed out-of-place for a rock venue. About the size of my apartment and scattered with peculiar chairs and retro vinyl couches, the setting appeased an intimate, albeit sweating, crowd. Having last seen Dog Day play a raucous gig at the expansive Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto, I couldn’t imagine how they’d finesse their songs for such quaint quarters.

It ended up being a non-issue since Dog Day are touring as the paired-down duo of Smith and Nancy Urich. Explaining early to the crowd that they’ve moved into the woods outside Halifax and abandoned mankind, Dog Day (Smith on guitar, Urich on drums, and occasionally trading places) launched into a mob of new tracks that sounded as urgent as their Concentration material, if more groove-oriented. And although I’d scored what was easily the most embarrassing chair on site (leopard-print with metallic armrests, yes), I couldn’t remain seated when fresh songs like ‘Final Fight’ (available to stream on their Myspace) and ‘Living In the Woods’ (working title, maybe) pounded so savagely, yet so vulnerably.

Smith rocked some wonderfully discordant solos while Urich stared excitedly forward during each song, nearly frothing over her drum-kit. Ending the set with an outstanding trilogy of tracks – a new one sung by Urich, ‘Stray’ off Concentration, and an extended ‘Warm Regards’ from New Problems – Dog Day gave a thoroughly promising glimpse of their future as a duo. Promising because, from all accounts, nothing crucial has changed. Smith’s songwriting, his and Urich’s subdued vocal exchanges; that’s what Dog Day has always been, and thankfully what unflinchingly remains.

I’ll miss their on-stage axe-battles, but who knows what future tours will look like. Smith openly admits that they had barely a month to prep for this current excursion westward from SappyFest, and that Urich learned the drums in that tight span of time. For something born under such pressure, Dog Day has never looked so natural.

33. Concentration – Dog Day (2009)

(Taken from SCQ’s Top 20 Albums of 2009:)

From the moment I first heard Concentration on a Soundscapes listening-post, I sensed that I’d stumbled upon something irreplaceable. On the surface it sounded like a straight-forward indie-rock album but there was something to its feel, as if each chord and vocal were swamped in humid darkness and embracing that cool caress. Between Seth Smith’s vocals seemingly coated in post-punk echo and atmospheric rifts which occasionally boiled up out of nowhere, Concentration held pop songs – dark but catchy nonetheless. And as these tracks followed me around the next several months, these tracks further revealed themselves; the clinking glasses and bar chatter that swirls around ‘Saturday Night’’s close, that pristine guitar jam which turns the romantic pop of ‘Rome’ into something far greater, or the devastating breakdown that transforms ‘Judgement Day’. An indie-rock record that towers over its countless competitors usually has a calling-card, be it the rhythmic propulsion of The National, Grizzly Bear’s four-part harmonies, or the sincere psychedelia of Animal Collective. Dog Day have a calling-card, that much I’m sure of, but pinpointing its gears at work is far tougher since each member of the quartet contributes such distinctive measures to a composition. The way these songs shift and pulse, it seems positively shameful to label Dog Day something as bland as indie-rock… but if that’s the most apt descriptor available, I’ll happily pronounce Concentration the best indie-rock record of the year.

New Problems - Seth Smith

New Problems

Seth Smith
Zunior.com.

SCQ Rating: 78%

Between the release of Dog Day’s Concentration last spring and their vinyl-only EP Elder Schoolhouse in autumn, singer/guitarist Seth Smith quietly unveiled his first solo album. In fact, New Problems’ existence was more coughed out as a by-the-by than “quietly unveiled”, with Smith announcing it as a “scrapbook type record of old b-sides and demos”. One’s problems must be in the eye of the beholder, however, as New Problems is far more adventurous than that recycle-bin description anticipates, sequencing idiosyncratic acoustic songs with experimental segues that create Smith’s own pirate radio signal.

Breaking down these twenty tracks and familiarizing yourself between full songs and interludes is half the fun of New Problems, as the lack of spacing between tracks blurs boundaries and groups handfuls of tracks into like-minded moods. (Being that my digital copy of New Problems is actually fused into two mp3-chunks – side 1 and side 2 of the record, respectively – my job of titling tracks correctly became unusually difficult.) Intermissions range from the brief and warped psychedelic passages of ’69’ and ‘Black Beauty’ to the melodic but secretive ‘Precious Lady’ and ‘In the Evening’ (the latter of which is such a tender highlight, I wish it had been expanded a bit); each of these providing a muddled distraction between the fully-finished songs. Smith applies a stripped-down pressure on the Dog Day-ready ‘Warm Regards’ and ‘Fish’ while retaining his post-punk tone on the near-bluesy ‘No Driver’, but the most affecting of tracks feature Smith’s more meditative songwriting. Gravitating from blown-bass to sweetened toy-box notes on ‘Nice’ is the instrumental inversion of the song’s lyrical tone, as Smith’s refrain of “I’ll give you everything you want” dissolves into “I will kill you and eat you”; two statements which are likely not one in the same. Yet the songwriter’s voice takes a more pacified role on ‘Transformer’, a beautifully understated, anti-love song.

Churning out lo-fi gems as often as rustic ruminations, the backbone of New Problems lies not in the former or latter, but in their constant convergence. The edits and sequencing which turns this odds’n’ends compilation into a bonafide album, well-planned and harmonious, deserve the gold star here. Let’s hope Smith remains as prolific in the future as the last few years have proven, and we hear a second scrapbook sometime soon.

Dog Day (SCQ's Year-End Questionnaire Part I)

Although I’d never heard of Dog Day at the beginning of 2009, I’ve quickly caught on thanks to their brilliant new full-length Concentration and this fall’s Elder Schoolhouse EP. To boot, vocalist and lead songwriter Seth Smith quietly unveiled his own collection of polished demos and b-sides, called New Problems, in September. Fresh from the band’s third (?!?) Canadian tour of the year, Smith answers some broad questions about the year’s finest moments.

SCQ: What have been some of your favourite records of 2009? Gush away!

I can't speak for everyone but here's my answers.
This year:

Sonic Youth - The Eternal
Julie Doiron - I Can Wonder What You did with Your Day
Grizzly Bear - Vecketimist
Rick White - 137
Dinosaur Jr. - Farm
York Redoubt - S/T
Atlas Sound - Logos
Shearing Pinx - Weaponry
ECT/Reclusive Mute 7" Split

Not from this year:

Television Personalities - ...and don't the kids just love it
Stereolab - Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements

SCQ: Be it from the radio or lost on Myspace, what songs could you not stop spinning?

I've been listening to a lot of Grand Trine's upcoming record. It's strong.

SCQ: Seldom celebrated but crucial to The Album’s identity is cover-art. Can you offer any shortlist of personal favourites from the past year?

Dinosaur Jr's Farm, Black Mold, Thee Oh Sees' Help, Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest were all nice.. nothing really blew me away this year tho.

SCQ: When you look back on what transpired this year, what will stand out as your most memorable professional moment(s) of 2009?

Concentration release at North St Church.
Recording with Rick White.
Playing with Dinosaur Jr.
Recruiting Robbie Shedden on drums

SCQ: Most of us probably haven’t thought as far as New Years Eve plans but still, looking forward, what do you have on the horizon for 2010?

Goin' sufin'

Cover Art Highs and Lows: Concentration - Dog Day

HIGH

Concentration
Dog Day
Outside Records.

Like the music herein, I didn’t know what to make of Concentration’s geometric cover art, designed in black and white shapes but coloured curiously with pastel variety, upon first encounter. What looks like a mask is only the first of many in this fold-open series of acid-washed faces, which, one on top of another, grows to resemble a totem pole. Besides the cool pie-sliced ouija board of band-members and lyrics, the ensemble is capped off beautifully by the image beneath the disc itself: a hooded lizard! That’s right… beneath those masks is an all-knowing, cold-blooded reptile. Once you’ve fully taken in the record, it adds up – what sounds like typical indie-rock on first listen gradually unveils itself to be a murky, goth-tinged pop record.

Elder Schoolhouse - Dog Day

Elder Schoolhouse

Dog Day
Divorce Records.

SCQ Rating: 72%

The morning after Dog Day’s blistering set at Horseshoe Tavern, I sat down and counted myself one of the lucky 400 people to own Elder Schoolhouse, the Halifax quartet’s ultra-limited, vinyl-only, mini-album. Having prepped myself a bit by reading a Chart Attack interview with bassist/vocalist Nancy Urich, I thought I was ready for the band’s “spooky” direction. I wasn’t. Slopping out of my speakers like compost sludge, ‘Ritual’ sounded like a lost track off The Cure’s Pornography, all doom-laden bass and eerie keys, with vocalist/guitarist Seth Smith singing through some sort of thunderous mic effect. Was Smith being sarcastic when he described Elder Schoolhouse as “lively and bright”? Was this the result of Urich’s quoted affinity for noise-bands? Nah, it was just my record player – which had somehow changed speeds without me knowing – and by the end of the first chorus, I rectified the problem.

The message of that story isn’t that I’m pretty dim-witted (I can translate that in less than a paragraph), but that Dog Day’s sound is rooted as firmly in pop music as it is in gloomier, noisier genres, and I wouldn’t have been terribly shocked had their record not been playing at half-speed. Luckily, Elder Schoolhouse at its intended speed is way cooler and finds them toiling in progressively noisier arrangements. If you’ve checked out the sample ‘Synastry’, you’ve also just heard the brightest of these tracks, one that wouldn’t sound out of place on Concentration. More menacing but no less enjoyable are ‘Ritual’, with its harsh guitars revving like a pack of hungry motorcycles, and ‘Dark Day’, which was written specifically for the band by Rick (Eric’s Trip) White. With claustrophobic melodies and frightening song-breakdowns, Elder Schoolhouse could’ve been the devious little brother to Concentration’s accomplished nuances but no… Dog Day take it a few steps further. What might’ve been a title track becomes the black psychedelia of ‘Concentration’, a falling off point where Dog Day revels in the echoed incoherence of lost lyrics and near-goth guitar riffs.

If Dog Day’s direction on the record’s first side sounds vicious, side two – a looming ten-minute onslaught of distorted guitars - is downright sadistic. The song in question, ‘New Beginning’, sets out like a controlled, if surprisingly raw, slow-burner before distortion stretches through verse and chorus, percussion fades in and falls out, amps start crinkling and six-strings become band-saws waging war. As unrehearsed and messy as it sounds, the whole spectacle of it is pretty marvelous, no different than how Smith and Urich battle their instruments against each-other to close each live show in deafening fashion. This mini-album isn’t for everyone (i.e. my neighbours) but Elder Schoolhouse is more than a few new songs recorded at Rick White’s studio; it’s a descent into madness that will either mark Dog Day’s discography as a bizarre hiccup or crucial turning point.

Concentration - Dog Day

Concentration

Dog Day
Outside Music.

SCQ Rating: 81%

So I’m listening to ‘You Won’t See Me On Sunday’ and minding my own business when I uncover how closely that seventh track off Concentration resembles The Pains of Being Pure At Heart’s ‘Come Saturday’. Is this a witty rebuke? Perhaps a chance combination of chords? In either case I’m bothered. It’s one thing for critics to launch The Pains of Being Pure At Heart into their fifteen minutes as if they’re the next messiahs of hipster-cool, but if that means a truly awesome band by the name of Dog Day ends up playing second fiddle, I take issue. Regardless of who wrote which first, there’s no questioning that ‘You Won’t See Me On Sunday’ is the stronger song; growing from its initial riff and exercising some expert guitar-swagger before spiraling into a moody overcast those Brooklyn kids could only dream of creating.

Enough blogosphere comparisons… Dog Day deserve better company (like Sonic Youth, who they share producer John Agnello with) thanks to Concentration, the Halifax-based quartet’s third album; a brooding collection that marries addictive songwriting with dissonant flourishes, ensuring its audience never gets too comfortable. Such mood-shifts are evident as early as in ‘Neighbour’, where an innocent party-invitation – from the “forces of darkness”, no doubt – turns sinister with Nancy Urich and Seth Smith trading ominous cups of sugar amid driving minor-chords. Or take the sympathetic string-picking of ‘Don’t Worry About the Future’, a song that consoles the listener’s anxiety with Smith’s casual intonation while subtle waves of tension shift and spike. Best yet is how ‘Judgement Day’’s taut anticipation allows some open-ended chords to punch through, reminding us that Concentration is as much about rock as it is about mood.

On that note, Concentration offers a few single-worthy tunes to contrast their drearier side. The celebratory ‘Wait It Out’ is a break-up daydream, where an insular relationship is prepped for self-destruction along with driving percussion and playful bass-lines. Moments later we’re dancing to the rousing ‘Saturday Night’, where Smith remarks:
“It’s Saturday night/
let’s ride the crazy wave of anticipation/
until we get let down.”
These nights on the town, detailed as both drunken and hollow, act as the setting for an album as nocturnal and nonchalant as Concentration. Yet they also set the stage for ‘Peace’; a late-night phone-call to weariness that exemplifies decadence with chiming electric guitars and echoed vocals. That an album of greatly converging moods closes with such a strong statement should hardly surprise fans of Dog Day, since the foursome were formerly spare-parts of well-known indie and hardcore bands. Still, as someone who recently discovered Dog Day and is fighting to ignore any instinctive tendencies to write in journalistic smoke and mirrors, this is an album carefully built to bare no expiry date. And for that reason alone, Concentration should, with any justice, outlast the few dozen indie-rock, internet-prodigies still lurking beneath Myspace this year.