Music > Interviews

Interview with Dog is Dead

30/01/12

“We are a mess. We are failures and we love it.” Thus spake Dog is Dead and on occasion, we would be let to believe it… but not in this case. Dog is Dead may represent the nonchalance of youth, but you don’t get to amass a collection of fans and songs of their calibre without motivation, intent and talent, as we find out speaking to lead singer Rob…

You kick off your big headline tour in earnest in Norwich, don’t you? Yeah, we’re really excited; we’ve only been to Norwich one time, and that was just a support, so it’s gonna be great having our own gig there. 

So being the first date on the tour, does that mean we get the very best of you, or a slightly shakey start?! Haha, well on the one hand you get fresh Dog is Dead before we’ve been, I don’t know, booed off in other places, but it’s also the first gig on the tour and what happens then is… Nah, it’s gonna be brilliant and it’s a nice place to start the tour as well. Norwich seems to have fans that don’t forget, you know.

How have you been preparing for the big stint of the full tour? It’s weird ‘cause we’ve just been really busy; as soon as we stop playing, we’re in the studio, so I guess the way we’ve been preparing for playing live is playing live! There’s not a whole bunch of rehearsal breaks, just ‘cause we’re really busy at the moment. We’ve got like one day off before hand, then we’ll be hitting it hard!

We’ve been lucky enough to see the sneak peak of the video for your new single, ‘Two Devils’, but we haven’t heard the full song, so can you explain a bit to us about the new video and the song in general? Well the song’s quite a darker side to what we do and a different colour to the normal Dog is Dead that we wanted to share. It’s like a twisted love story, only slightly more psychedelic. It’s something we only really wrote a couple of months ago, but something we’re really quite proud of, so we were like, ‘OK, let’s make sure we can put this out’, see how the radio reacts to it and take a video and put it everywhere. The video’s gonna be really creepy and quite haunting, but very fun to make. I don’t want to spoil it too much, but it’s definitely gonna be worth checking out.

And when it comes to the videos, how much of a say do you get, or would you want? Are you excited to put the ideas in other people’s hands? Erm, well we come up with a decent concept ourselves and put a few references in, then we like to have a director really get in to what we’ve said and add to it, ‘cause I think it’s good to give people their own artistic licence, but at the same time, let us have our own piece of the pie and our say in it, ‘cause that’s how really beautiful things are made, with that combination.

Does the same go for the artwork for the singles and EP? They’ve all got these images of halcyon childhood days… Yeah, that was all our kind of idea; we found the right kind of thing and got it made into that kinda postcard effect.

You’ve got these youthful references, like in the titles ‘Young’ and ‘ Your Childhood’ – do you feel like your youth is already slipping away from you Rob? Well I think it’s gonna be quite a ‘coming of age’ record in a way, because we’ve been writing the album since we were about 15, so like half of it then, and half of it in the last few months, so yeah, I guess there’s that kind of youthful side to it things, but then there’s a whole lot of development along the way. The same goes with us, because we’re all fairly young people and we’re all growing up making music; we all have this lucky thing where we’ve gone through our later teenage years making music and being in a band, and what a fun thing to be doing, and to write about.

A lot of young bands go through their rites of passage whilst being in the band, but what’s interesting about you guys is that your lyrics – as confirmed by ‘Two Devils’, go beyond personal experience as inspiration… Yeah, well I like to be able to paint a picture as well as have autobiographical references in there, and we’re influenced by so many lyricists and so many bands throughout the ages; we listened to a lot of grunge and psychedelia, then people like Lou Reed, and a lot of Motown music as well, so it’s quite an eclectic mix of things that we draw influence from. I never really stop drawing influence from different things, and different artforms as well as music.

We’re a magazine concerned with locality, so to question you about your own, what is Nottingham like for an emerging band? Well it’s quite interesting because I don’t think Nottingham’s ever produced a big band, or barely any band that do alright and get out of the city, but the opportunities are incredible and we found it really easy in Nottingham because as soon as we played one venue, we had the whole of Nottingham behind us to get out and do bigger things! We felt really well nurtured and helped out in that way; we could always get on to good gigs and I think a lot of artists have it the same, but it’s just really strange that until recently, when everything’s changing and we’re a part of… not a lot of bands, but various musicians who are starting to blossom and get out of Nottingham and we’re at the forefront of that, I think. Is the same sort of thing happening in Norwich then?

Yes, we’ve got some great venues, so we’ve always had a good scene historically, but local events like Latitude Festival and Playfest have been able to give some local bands a leg up, which Dot to Dot must have done for you, in Nottingham? Yeah, Dot to Dot is one of my favourite festivals, partly ‘cause it’s in Nottingham, so what a cool thing to have in your home, but yeah you guys having Latitude is just awesome – I had such a blast there last year. We’re really proud of things like that, and luckily we have Rock City as well, which is a complete gem amongst all the sort of O2s that are going on! It’s good to have Nottingham O2-free, and having a venue with so much character and history is really nice.

BBC Introducing has done great things in each of its locations, but face rumours that it’ll be axed owing to the BBC spending cuts – you played their stage at Glastonbury didn’t you? Yeah, they’ve been really great to us as well, and the whole Glastonbury thing was awesome, because we were picked to be the only unsigned band who were on the highlights; we were the Introducing band that was on BBC2, so that did so much for us, which was great. It would be a complete horror story if that wasn’t going on again and other people weren’t getting that opportunity. It took us ages to get to that stage, but it certainly helps if you’ve got someone at the BBC caring about what you’re doing. 

There have been a couple of game changers for you, momentum-wise, Glastonbury being one of them and also appearing on Skins, subsequently being picked up by Atlantic Records – could you feel those events making your career ramp up a gear? Yeah, they were just two parts of a big picture that have helped us get to where we are now and they’re great things to have said you’ve done. I mean, the reason we did Skins was because we thought it was a bit unusual, and we’d be doing something we weren’t used to and so it seemed quite exciting, and it was. It did things that you wouldn’t expect it to, like spread our fanbase quite a lot – well, perhaps you would – but it spread in quite strange places, and overseas, you know. We became instantly a slightly bigger band, but the fact that we’d built up all this stuff by ourselves made it difficult for people to ignore us. We’ve made this whole story.

Bombay Bicycle Club, who you’ve supported, had a really nice progression to what they were doing as well, going from playing smaller stages to headlining the Word Arena at Latitude last year. Career wise, is theirs one you’d like to emulate? Definitely, I mean all we’re bothered about is being around, and being able to make music for a living and their career seems to have panned out really nicely, so you know, you could only hope for that for what we do; you can only hope we’re on our third album and be looking forward.

How close are you to putting out your album then Rob? So we’re finishing It off after the tour, in the couple of weeks after that, then hopefully we’re releasing it August, or early September.

And you’ve had David Kosten at the helm, haven’t you? He’s been part of some really imaginative albums in his career – what’s he brought to the table? Well Dave’s just a complete genius, a totally crazy guy; he’s got some really crazy ideas and it completely experimental in his nature. He’s a big fan of Dog is Dead and that really helps enormously, and his studio is just full of really interesting instruments and synthesisers and all sorts of things that you wouldn’t kinda expect to be using. I think he just really believes in the band and gives us this free reign and encourages us not to sit in any kind of box – really push boundaries and really be experimental. He’s been a big part of making the record what it’s gonna be.

I’ve read that tracks like ‘River Jordan’ allow you to kinda rock out, so what can we expect from your live show when you come to Norwich? Oh, you’re getting the first show, so this is gonna be us, full energy; we’re gonna be five guys getting very excited about being on a stage, so it’s gonna be quite animated and hopefully everyone’s gonna have a great time. It’s gonna be pretty big and pretty fun, I think.

Emma Garwood

Dog is Dead come to Norwich Arts Centre on February 18th. For tickets, go to www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk.