Dr Dog's brilliant new 'Shame Shame' from Matt Rothstein

Matt emailed me this review and a simple, one-line command that also sums up my feelings about this band perfectly:

'If you don't know these guys, find the album and promptly worship it.'

I only recently started listening to Dr. Dog, mainly their great 2007 album, We All Belong. They were a band that had sat on my iPod, ignored for no particular reason. Then “Ain’t It Strange” popped up while I was on shuffle, and I was hooked by its ramshackle Beatles style. Listening to the whole album only deepened my admiration (and revealed The Band as another key influence of theirs).

Then lo and behold, a week or so after that, I see that a new Dr. Dog album had just arrived. How fitting, I thought. As good an excuse as any to get a review down while delayed at Cleveland-Hopkins airport, a fact which annoys me not even a little bit – all that means is I have more time to love up on the new album, Shame, Shame.

This album has nearly called into question my way of evaluating music. Making perfect rock music can’t be as easy as it sounds here, can it? Dr. Dog has got to be doing something different from all the other indie bands trying to effectively update 60’s rock, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what it is, other than that they’re just better songwriters and musicians.

“Where’d All The Time Go?” is the perfect example of this, and the best song on the album, hands down. It might even be my favorite song of the year so far. Its build and release is a fucking clinic, a pinnacle of joy, and the final guitar solo could not feel more organic/orgasmic.

And yet Dr. Dog also has progressed their sound. “Mirror, Mirror” does, in fact, contain the woefully predictable line the title implies, but it also contains some perfectly bouncy vocal phrasing over a walking bass line and backbeat, with Apples In Stereo-like filtered harmonies that pop up in a few other places on the album as well.

The album just plain doesn’t have any weak points, unless one doesn’t go for the slow, soulful slide guitar on “Station”. Even so, “Shadow People”, directly preceding it, would overpower any doubts with an exuberant sing-along that wouldn’t be out of place soundtracking an awesome indie movie trailer – probably one about an adolescent renewing their sense of wonder at the world, or something like that.

I’ll stop there so I don’t dilute the message any further, because I cannot say this strongly enough: if you want to find music with a level of effortless grace and beauty that hasn’t been reached in seemingly forever, look no further than Shame, Shame by Dr. Dog.