The party never sleeps: Fat Dog unleashed in America

Above all else, Fat Dog commit to the bit. On a humid morning in Austin, Texas, the five-piece roll up to an outdoor photo studio decked out in a jumble sale-like mix of outfits: from a bright baby blue tracksuit to hiking boots and chino shorts, the south Londoners walk a fine line between zeitgeisty (‘gorpcore’, anyone?) and kitschy. Their collective decision to embrace the city’s unofficial motto of ‘Keep Austin Weird’ is clearly no joke.

With a taste for fluffy hats and a shy twinkle in his eye, frontman Joe Love stands quietly in the corner, taking in his surroundings: a junkyard littered with rusty push bikes and overgrown plants. He’s something of a wallflower upon first introduction, allowing his clothes to do more of the talking. His shyness, however, could be attested to the way he describes the south Londoners’ first trip to the US as an “overload” of new sights and sounds.

Over the two days that NME spends in Fat Dog’s orbit, watching them win over crowds in vast outdoor spaces, the band make their early impressions of Austin loud and clear. As we walk between venues, bassist Ben Harris poses for photos on desolate street corners, laughing as he compares the city’s urban sprawl to “something straight out of Grand Theft Auto.” Even when drummer Johnny Hutchinson forgets to bring his signature German Shepherd mask to the Cover shoot, there’s little drama: everyone seems too distracted by random paraphernalia that surrounds us.

Having flown in from a sold-out show in New York, the band are in town for a rapid run of 12 offshoot SXSW gigs, roadtesting new material like the spacey, Flaming Lips-esque ‘I Am The King’ or the more rambunctious live track ‘Wither’, which involves a mid-song dance break. “We’re playing 6000 gigs per day at the moment,” says keyboardist Chris Hughes as we sit down with Love to recharge over a lunch of smoothies and tacos. “But that’s what it’s all about: chaos.”

Watching Fat Dog perform should trigger a visceral reaction in any young music fan. Love is the central figure of Fat Dog, a 6ft something leader who can command attention intensely enough to scare the living daylights out of any passive audience members. Their mix of electronica and punk is an adrenaline-pumping experience: one that makes you feel like a teenager experiencing the bedlam of the moshpit for the first time. They possess all the promise, charisma and youthful abandon that new bands are supposed to have.

“When we were doing opening slots for other artists, we got a lot of hate from people because they didn’t want to see the support act ‘out-do’ anyone,” says Love, before Hughes takes over. “When we toured with Viagra Boys [in January last year], we had this guy come up to us who said, ‘You were supposed to warm the crowd up, but instead your lead singer was an arrogant guy, a tiny little prick…’

“You should make that a pull quote,” Love tells NME, knocking the picnic table with his fist. It’s this combination of quiet confidence and myth-making that has garnered Fat Dog a fanbase known as The Kennel, borne from the oddballs that inhabit influential Brixton venue The Windmill, which has given mathy rockers like Black Midi and Squid their start over the years.

“What we’ve got as a band is special – it’s an amazing feeling” – Chris Hughes

What sets Fat Dog apart from their forebears, however, is their frivolity. Early shows saw them don nun costumes and karate suits, the latter which Love still carries around on tour. Last August, when NME saw the band perform at Reading Festival, stood metres from us were a group of young boys waving a homemade sign that read ‘Fat Dog are for the kids’. Much like their Domino labelmates Wet Leg, they’re an emblem of post-pandemic guitar music, with songs that inhabit the heat, energy and ecstasy of basement venues.

“We’ve had crowds who are clearly thinking, ‘What is this?’,” says Hughes. “When we toured with Sports Team [in late 2022], it felt like we could have a playful competition every night. We could tire people out so that they would stop dancing for the headliner because they’d be throwing up or out of breath.”

This reputation is already renowned to the point that last week (April 18), the band played the 1500-capacity Electric Brixton off the back of two singles. They’d even tried to record their forthcoming debut album to tape. “We gave it our all in the studio for five hours,” says Love. “But then we listened to it back and were like, “Fuck?! Is that what we sound like live?’”

Hughes continues: “When we play live, there is a lot of loudness, sweat and energy. Like, you can’t smell an album.” Well, if the new record had a scratch-and-sniff feature, what would it be? “Dog shit and desperation,” he counters.

Though they’ve refined their vision over time, the freedom-seeking spirit that defined Fat Dog’s early days can still be heard in their music. A teenage EDM fan that soon became interested in heavier acts like Fat White Family and The Intergalactic Republic of Kongo, Love would frequent The Windmill in search of more new, unfamiliar sounds. “I was hanging around at 16, not even old enough to be in the room,” he says, laughing. “But no one asked questions if you were playing a gig.”

Having worked with other lineups, Love eventually recruited Harris, Hutchinson and jazz saxophonist Morgan Wallace shortly after lockdown ended. Hughes, meanwhile, “totally bullshitted” his way into Fat Dog; he told Love that he could play the viola in order to earn his place – before going on eBay to buy a second-hand instrument and attempting to teach himself the basics. The band were making their own lore before they’d even performed together.

“I was a fan before I joined Fat Dog,” says Hughes. “I was going through a breakup and one night, I had a little cry and a dance at one of their gigs, and then thought to myself, ‘Fuck it, let’s do this.” He turns to face Love head-on. “At the start, you hated me – you couldn’t look me in the eye during our first rehearsal! But I don’t blame you, I was a chancer.” Love responds: “I really like The Windmill, but it’s like how I feel towards America: do I like the people?” He throws a smirk in our direction. Point taken.

Released last August, Fat Dog’s debut single ‘King Of The Slugs’ sprang seemingly out of nowhere like a jack-in-the-box. A riot of snaking rhythms that quickly gives way to a seven minute-long electroclash freakout, it’s playful enough to be wrongfully dismissed as novelty – but has helped to distance the band from their more self-serious peers. “A fan once described Fat Dog as sounding like an episode of Black Mirror. I’d take that as a compliment,” Hutchinson jokes when we regroup with the rest of the band later on.

You can only imagine the collaborative toiling necessary to execute the track’s tangles of vicious guitars and accelerated drumming. Love admits that pressure of working on such an ambitious arrangement – which had also already been aired dozens of times live – became too much too soon, to the point where his girlfriend bought him a ‘You Tried’ badge after a round of failed studio sessions.

A band-wide feeling of exhaustion soon spurred a move towards working with producer James Ford [Arctic Monkeys, Jessie Ware], whom they met via their label home at Domino, during the early stages of recording their debut. Bringing a trusted hand into the inner circle would soon alleviate the pressure of capturing the myriad sides of their sound – and allow Love to find humour and relief in their more experimental moments.

“I was having a conversation with James and he was like, ‘Do you like ska?’ So I responded with, ‘Yeah, I guess… but I don’t want to be the new Madness,” Love recalls. “That’s what someone said to us after a gig in Ipswich: ‘You know what you sound like? Madness from the future.’”

Fat Dog’s most excitable member, Hughes cracks up whenever Love tells an anecdote, another being that he once caught Hutchinson sneakily watching an episode of The Simpsons on his phone while performing. He describes an intuitive bond with his bandmates, one that has been hundreds of gigs in the making and like stepping into “a totally different world”, as Wallace put it in a recent tour diary entry for Loud Women.

“When we play live, there is a lot of loudness, sweat and energy” – Chris Hughes

“What we’ve got as a band is special,” says Hughes. “I hear things from my friends who are in other groups, and there just seems to be constant animosity elsewhere. We get these moments where everything lines up: sometimes, we all look at each other on stage, and quietly recognise that we’re playing a really good gig. It’s an amazing feeling.”

Later that evening, we follow the band to one last show: a midnight set at Esther Follie’s, where the floor is lacquered with years of spillages and the ceiling hangs a little too low for comfort. It feels closer to the dingy clubs that they’re used to tearing apart back home – and the band are champing at the bit to let loose, as though there’s an extra charge in the air.

After tearing through a thumping rendition of ‘All The Same’, they become aware of some shouting from outside. The noise gets closer and more strident. Behind the stage there is a large window, through which some passers-by have stopped to watch Fat Dog, dancing and cheering along as if they’re in the room with us. Love leans forward in their direction, gently chuckles to himself, and waves back. Perhaps nobody’s more surprised to find them gaining new fans on the other side of the world than the band themselves.

Listen to Fat Dog’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify and here on Apple Music

Words: Sophie Williams
Photography: Sam Keeler
Label: Domino Records

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