Album Review: Dog Unit - 'At Home'
London's instrumental magicians: Stitching the seams between UK post-rock and electronica, Dog Unit are mesmerising, slightly daunting and wickedly talented.
It's always difficult to write music without a voice leading literal proceedings on a story. It's also doubly difficult to foster a fan-cult following on just melodic hooks and breezy anecdotes. But it's exactly what the four Londoners of Dog Unit have done. Stirring up a charming resemblance with post-rock delicacies Tortoise all the while in-keeping with the barrage of riff-heavy streaks that favourites King Gizzard produce, Dog Unit are a light fingered, yet heavy-limbed reckoning of four individuals with sheer mastery in musicianship.
Now, comes the bands' first project - At Home. Featuring high-octane driver When Do We Start Fighting? and cataclysmic stop-out Consistent Effort, At Home portrays all stages of a journey out into space. The endorphin-inducing affair of liftoff, the meltdown operations of when the wrong button is pushed and the discovery of wonder in orbit.
Written and recorded over the course of 2023, At Home is released alongside the bands' year-long residency back on Earth at Servant Jazz Quarters, which allowed avid fans to not only witness the quartet up close, but also saw them bathe in the new sounds that would eventually make up the album.
If the album sounds like it needs to be listened to in one foul swoop, that's because it intends to be. With little signposts and diversions routed throughout, it's a sure-sign that the record will look after you. In fact, since the bands' inception in 2019, writing and performing music designed to arc over a course of an interrupted hour is virtually the bands' MO. Not only does it signify the bands' lateral connection with one another, it also demonstrates the bands' aptitude for putting together such a sonically adventurous record - all without the listeners' attention span falling off a cliff.
Just from the otherworldly introduction of Concrete Barges on the Banks of the Thames alone, can you see the bands' sonic step-up from their first two EPs. While Turn Right and Right Again (2022) and Barking to Gospel (2020) featured the intuitive combings of Dog Unit from the outset, there's no atmospheric accompaniment better shown than At Home. Soon as the introductions are over and dealt with, we're met with this swathe of synth staggerings and melty guitar inflections that both Scowcroft and Walton emanate almost Strokes-esque. When Do We Start Fighting then kicks in with a temperament best reflected when combatant square up to one another, right before fisticuffs are undoubtedly exchanged. Turns out the pair are seemingly walking into the sunset sharing ice cream instead, with the blaring crescendo bringing the song to a resounding close.
“With the two EPs, we were very much finding our voice in real time, sort of feeling our way with all the microphones turned on,” Sam recognises. “But to continue the metaphor, on At Home, we’ve worked out what we wanted to say before standing up and saying it with intent."
The main breadwinner on We Can Still Win This, is that undulating bass line backed up with spiky guitar pickings while In a Magic World, Then Yes has us in a contemplative mood. John X Kennedy is a combative beast, too. Bubbling atmosphere transpires to chord inversions and half-time cadences that is a super-melodic bop.
Meanwhile, as we venture nearer to the epilogue of this journey, Consistent Effort hits us as a slow-burning epic that has funky stylings similar to Pigeons Playing Ping Pong as it does to a distorted Interpol in the latter third of the song. A wholly powerful moment to unpack. Then, the record ends as it began. The band's paradigm of a mesmerising soundscape and nagging groove met with a underlying feeling of subtle tension that undoubtedly has the listener on tender-hooks, both live and on record.
The band also today announce the limited "Greensleeve" edition of At Home, an innovative physical edition of the album geared towards greater environmental sustainability.. The Greensleeve is identical to the LP version, with all the same expansive photography, liner notes and lush physicality, except in place of the vinyl record itself will be a code for high-resolution downloads of the album. The album announcement also comes with the band playing their biggest London headline show to date, at The Lexington on April 18th, which has since sold out.
Words by Alex Curle
