Dr. Dog doesn’t sound like a band that should be experiencing any kind of wide success. Or, for that matter, like a band that is even aware that its music has been recorded and distributed.
The band’s albums so far have been an adventure in lo-fi, consisting mostly of roomy eight-track recordings with handclaps, whoops and hollers that add a romper-room effect to the music. But Dr. Dog’s got something special going for them, an unfettered, joyful approach to rock and roll – the complex harmonies of the Beach Boys, the Beatles’ love of pop and curiosity to see how far you can stretch it, the raw, lovably weird space-cadet rock of early Bowie – all channeled through the indie-rock slop of bands like Pavement.
“Pavement are one of the first bands that I really got into,” explains singer and guitarist Scott McMicken from a tour stop in Texas, where Dr. Dog is opening for Jack White’s new band, The Raconteurs.
“Pavement definitely have a spirit about them that really comes through on their records. It’s really endearing. You can easily relate to them. They’re quick to be self-deprecating. They have a sense of humor,” he says excitedly. “All those kinds of thing we definitely share with that band – and just that level of comfort they display with their ability to just toss things off, to be sloppy or make mistakes and not worry about it.”
Dr. Dog lives its life in that musical pocket where sloppiness is viewed as avant-garde, where quirky, inaccessible recordings are interpreted as challenging art. That’s not to say that the band’s folk-rock-blues-soul-bluegrass mish-mash is anything short of ear candy. Whether the band is doing a country two-step or a psychedelic rocker, the three- and sometimes four-part harmonies are always juicy and borderline genius. Which is why the people who matter in Dr. Dog’s musical world – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Strokes, Magic Numbers, My Morning Jacket, The Raconteurs – have been eager to welcome the band to their elite club.
“Oh man, yeah! Dr. Dog received so much help from people. People have really latched onto us and want to help us, and that feels great,” McMicken enthuses. “And the fact that it’s by and large coming from musicians who I have an immense amount of respect for to begin with, it just totally inflates the whole thing to a whole other level.”
Depending on your background, Dr. Dog can come across as either a brilliant pop band or a jangley mess. It’s a matter of appreciating the aesthetic the band is pursuing, which is more consistent with the recordings of early Stones and The Band than what you’ll hear on the radio today. It’s a “push record and see what happens” approach that is all about in-the-moment creativity, which makes overdubs and second takes sort of against the rules.
All of that helps to explain why, when Rough Trade Records gave Dr. Dog $20,000 to record its new EP, Takers and Leavers (released in September), the band still refused to step into a real studio, and instead made a modest upgrade to a 24-track recorder, which is the technological equivalent of a thumbtack.
“I know our records tend to sound a little more distant or less greased up than contemporary rock records. But then of course, we all are very much in debt to the music of the past, so that’s sort of what we understand as the right kind of tone and sound,” McMicken says. “It’s more about putting yourself in a context that you’re comfortable working in. If we’re just in a room and we have a tape recorder and a piano, we can keep ourselves busy for weeks. But if we were in a room with a computer and an orchestra, we wouldn’t know what to do!”
With a new international record deal and tours lined up with some of the biggest alt-indie acts in the world, the five Philly boys are on a path to become the region’s least likely rock stars. Clad in thrift-store sweaters, unkempt beards and three-dollar sunglasses that are so unfashionable that they’re fashionable again, the band is often referred to as anti-image, if that’s even a real term. But McMicken assures that Dr. Dog’s disheveled state is hardly a marketing strategy.
“This is not meant as judgment, because maybe there’s some guy out there who never wears a shirt and snorts coke and wears scarves all the time, and maybe he’s a cool dude,” McMicken laughs. “But buying into that mythology of what a musician is, I think it’s just total nonsense. Certainly, we consciously try not to be that kind of pompous rock musician, but it’s not even an effort. It’s not even a temptation. It doesn’t require any effort to avoid that whatsoever, because it’s not who we are as people.”