POOL SIDE CHARDONNAY: DOG ORCHESTRA MEOW REVIEWED

BitCandy Rating: 9.0

Let’s start with the line. The moment I heard it I knew it’d be embedded deep in my memory. The more I listened to “Broke” the more the lines’ ingenuity reveals itself to me. Now I see that it’s not so much a lyric as it is a worldview. In life there are two types of people: those who do and those who don’t need their poolside chardonnay.

DOG ORCHESTRA “BROKE”

The Berlin-by-way-of-Stockholm group has written a concise and constantly engaging five song record to share with the world. The origins of Meow feel familiar. A couple of artistically-minded friends holed up in a studio in a new town, killing time before they found gainful employment. What started as a way to escape became something more. Lit late nights filled with bargain pizzas, cheap beers, and viewings of The Rock produced one of the singular debuts of the year.

DOG ORCHESTRA “CLUB FRAGILE (FT. LUNE)”

You gotta start somewhere, and Dog Orchestra are off and running with Meow. It hits all the right notes and keeps getting better on repeated listens. To think it was all made in coal-heated apartment during an excruciatingly bleak Berlin winter.Thankfully the band did not succumbed to carbon-monoxide poisoning, although their dark surroundings played a role in the tone and temperament of the record.

Meow has the feel of a brand new start, one that’s been put off for far too long. Thankfully these dudes finally got around to doing what they should have been all along.

DOG ORCHESTRA “HOTEL”

About Calvin Paradise

Calvin Paradise manages to live a productive life despite a childhood of home schooling and suffering from what some doctors have called the worst case of Groucho Marx's Syndrome in recorded history.