Past is present – but does it have a future? – with a latest sixties/seventies retread, Dr. Dog’s Fate.The revival of not just the seventies guitar sound, but the sixties soft Beatles, and in-between years’ country-folk isn’t a new trend, but it does feel like it has been picking up a lot more as of late, everywhere from Brooklyn’s MGMT (QRO photos) to Seattle’s Fleet Foxes (QRO album review). Philadelphia’s Dr. Dog ain’t newbies at this, having been delivering such a sound for years now, but it seems like they’re getting somewhat diminishing returns on their latest, Fate.
Dr. Dog broke out in 2004, thanks to an opening gig with southern-rock all-stars My Morning Jacket (QRO album review) and a citation in The New York Times, and they’ve been pretty prolific since then, with a new record each year afterwards. But while their live show hews more towards the Me Decade’s gritty guitar, their recorded work sticks a lot closer to the softer work from the sixties. While sometimes that pays off on Fate, it mostly feels too cute and twee.
Fate is best at its beginning and end. Opener “The Breeze” spices up its sweet folk with a touch of tropicalia, but it is the following “Hang On” that is the clear standout. Very sixties-seventies country-rock, “Hang” works very well as what it is. The latter end of Fate starts picking up with “100 Years”, a sad, almost gospel blues-man piece that works better for being more traditional than what preceded it, while “Uncovering the Old” does just that by throwing in some Billy Joel/Randy Newman-like seventies horns (reminiscent – though not as good as – Spoon’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (QRO album review) and Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky (QRO album review). Dr. Dog finally get a little grittier with the penultimate “The Beach”, though not amazingly so, and while finisher “My Friend” starts off with some ‘good Lord!’ fun and a great guitar-riff back-up, midway through it ill-advisably switches into a lamer pseudo-Beatles sound.
What makes that shift so disappointing is that it’s a return of Fate’s weaker middle. After “Hang On”, one just has to ‘hang on’ through the simple “The Old Days” until it’s annoying twee gets a bit better with more speed. “Army of Ancients” is a relaxed piano-man, but only okay, while “The Rabbit, the Bat, and the Reindeer” and especially “From” are weak, wanna-be soft-Beatles tracks. In between falls the guitar-rock “The Ark”, but it doesn’t really hold that much water.
Like Fleet Foxes (QRO photos), Dr. Dog is a band that started off bringing in lots of hype from their live shows, but then that somehow translated to their way softer & weaker records. Maybe it’s nostalgia, maybe it’s lazy reviewers, but this revival trend is not a particular great one.
MP3 Stream: “Hang On”
