Yahoo Lifestyle Fat Dog, London’s Latest Breakout Band, Takes on the World With Debut Album ‘Woof’: We ‘Hope You Feel It in Your Gut’
If you think rock ‘n’ roll is dead, just go to a Fat Dog show.
Since 2021, the Brixton-based five-piece has been slowly but surely winning over the London music scene with its wild, animalistic concerts, led by frontman Joe Love (yes, that’s his real name) conducting the crowd into the kind of mosh pit where your legs detach from your body. I first experienced this phenomenon at Glastonbury, when the band’s chaotic set at the tiny Strummerville stage was nearly shut down because attendees got too rowdy. Highlights included someone lighting a flare, a foam brick being thrown at Love’s head and the band’s sound engineer standing in the middle of it all to make sure Fat Dog’s unique blend of punk, electro-pop and funk infiltrated everyone’s ears.
Love remembers thinking it was a real brick, but that didn’t phase him. “I was like, ‘Alright, I’ve got a lot of adrenaline, so if it hit my head I’ll have 10 minutes before I black out,” he tells Variety on a bench in a South London dog park, because where else would we be? Joined by band members Chris Hughes (synths and keys) and Morgan Wallace (saxophone and keys), we came here with the goal of drumming up some Fat-Dog-on-dog interaction, but it’s almost suspiciously empty.
“It’s funny, in some interviews I want to say, ‘It’s just a name, we’re not all dog-related,'” Hughes says. “But it’s all so doggy now.”
Indeed, drummer Johnny Hutchinson sports a dog mask for the duration of Fat Dog’s shows (“We’ve never seen his real face,” Wallace jokes) and the title of the band’s debut album — out Friday via Domino Records — is “Woof,” the album art for which features a gigantic French bulldog. Perhaps they’ve made their doggy beds.
The name originated from an Instagram account Love used to run called @fatdogsandcats, where he would review overweight pets. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when Love started writing the songs featured on “Woof” in his bedroom, the cats were tossed to the side and Fat Dog became his moniker.
Once things in London opened back up, Love started to play a few solo shows, but then realized he needed some back-up. Wallace joined after responding to an ad Love posted looking for a saxophone player, whereas Hughes started off as a Fat Dog fan before the original synth player left, leaving a spot for him to take over.
After gaining traction through word-of-mouth on the London scene, Love and co. headed to the studio to record the demos with the help of two of the most in-demand U.K. indie producers at the moment, James Ford (who in the last year alone has worked on new albums for Fontaines D.C., Pet Shop Boys and the Last Dinner Party) and Jimmy Robinson (who also worked with the Last Dinner Party as well as Arctic Monkeys). The recording process took nine months, which Love says was “too long.”
“It was a whole gestation period,” Wallace adds.
Now “Woof” has finally been born, a trippy, whiplash-inducing record that fittingly starts with Love yelling, “It’s fucking Fat Dog, baby!” Its nine songs combine Nine Inch Nails-esque crunchy synths, nonsensical lyrics and a whole bunch of wacky samples — chopped-up barking, a faltering heart monitor — to create a sound simultaneously familiar and never-before-heard.
Love says Fat Dog’s musical ethos came from “fucking around and stealing shit that people haven’t really heard of.”
“You do it because you really want to copy something, and then because you can’t copy it good enough, you make something kind of original in that way,” he adds.
Nine Inch Nails, of course, was an influence — “I was watching a Trent Reznor interview right before this,” Love says — as were the Russian EDM group Little Big and jazz great Kamasi Washington.
“If you’ve got loads of different music tastes, that’s quite a good way of creating a unique-sounding thing,” Hughes says.
At this point, we’ve seen maybe five dogs, though none have dared to approach us — until Hughes spots a friend from across the park. “Hey, you alright, Ed?” he asks. Ed is accompanied by a wiener dog — or sausage dog, as the Brits say — who immediately bolts in our direction, wagging its little tail and howling as the band showers it with pets.
“Legs, you’re barking at Fat Dog!” Ed yells.
“The dog’s called Legs!” Love remarks. “That’s such a good name.”
Somehow refocused by finally seeing a dog — before that, the band spent no less than 10 minutes bantering about famous people they’d like to start beef with (Jacob Collier and Justin Bieber, watch out) — the band gets serious about the impact of their music.
“I’d hope that you feel it in your gut, you know,” Hughes says. “It’s nice when you can get something that hits you not just in your brain, but in the gut and makes you feel compelled to move a little bit. And hopefully you don’t get bored.”
“That’s the main thing,” Love agrees. “I did try and make it so you don’t get bored. I cut a lot of bullshit out.”
In October, Fat Dog will embark on a tour through Europe and North America, where the band hopes to continue the momentum it’s built up at home.
“When the audience is bouncing about, you really feel it and you get more into the music yourself, I think,” Hughes says. “It’s a reciprocal relationship.”
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