Golden Dogs - Big Eye Little Eye

Tracks

		Track Name	Length
	1	Dynamo
	2	Never Meant Any Harm
	3	Construction Worker
	4	Saints At the Gates
	5	Run Outta Luck
	6	Painting Ape
	7	Strong
	8	Theresa
	9	1985
	10	Life On The
	11	Force Of Nature
	12	Wheel of Fortune

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Information/Write-up

Album Information
Big Eyes Little Eyes promises to get more toes tapping and tails wagging. This time around the band enlisted the help of producter Paul Aucoin (the Sadies, Cuff the Duke).
The opening track "Dynamo" is a full frontal audio assault that grabs the listener's attention and dares them to crank up the stereo. Next up is the first single "Never Meant Any Harm", a pop gem with shout choruses. Other standout tracks include "Construction Worker" (featurig Grassia on lead vocals), "Painting Ape", "Runouttaluck", "Force of Nature" and a killer cover of the Wings classic "1985"

Big Eye Little Eye proves that these Dogs are indeed golden!

Fortunately, their manic energy isn’t limited to the stage. On their new record, Big Eye Little Eye, the band takes all that shambolic vigour and lays it down on disc. It’s impossible not to stomp your foot to the frantic opener, “Dynamo,” and it’s even harder to avoid shouting along to the choruses of first single “Never Meant Any Harm” and “Saints At The Gates,” a passionate track about playing live. If you’re not in the mood to air guitar, don’t worry, Big Eye Little Eye, which some critics are already calling the best disc of the year, has more to offer than just intensity. Intimate moments like the stripped down “Wheel Of Fortune,” the only song not recorded in the studio, puts listeners in Dave and Jess’ basement, while Theresa’s Beach Boys-style vocals is a touching tribute to one of the bands’ heroes, Brian Wilson.

On Big Eye Little Eye, it looks like The Golden Dogs have done everything right. And thank God, because the group almost didn’t make it this far.

It all started back in the summer of 1998 in Thunder Bay, the small northern Ontario city where Dave and Jess grew up. They met and played in a band together for a few months. Problem though: Dave was about to move to Toronto to form a band of his own and Jess was just starting university.

“For three years Jess was a voice on the phone,” says Dave smiling as he looks over at his wife. As Jess worked and traveled to Toronto whenever she could, Dave was writing what would become The Golden Dogs’ first EP. She’d eventually move to Toronto, and join The Dogs, who were just starting to play gigs around Toronto. But while Dave and Jess’ relationship solidified, their band was in constant flux, as band members kept coming and going. Somehow they managed to release a second EP. Soon after, True North Records came calling and things started looking up. The band re-released their two EPs on one critically acclaimed record, Everything In 3 Parts. They then opened for seminal bands such as Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party and The Libertines, got their performance at SXSW in Austin mentioned in the New York Times, were invited to showcase at Popkomm in Berlin and even had “Birdsong” appear in Douglas Coupland’s film Everything’s Gone Green.

Naturally, the group was anxious to record a follow-up, so they teamed up with Paul Aucoin, a prolific producer (The Old Soul/the Heavy Blinkers/Cuff the Duke) and founder of the instrumental pop group The Hylozoists, and headed into a bonafide studio for the first time. But, before they started recording, fate would find a way to screw the band again. Their drummer, Beau Stocker, was accepted to school in England two weeks before recording was scheduled to start and left the band. Faced with a major crisis, Knox, who was then the bassist, volunteered to drum. After a couple days of running through the songs, it turned out that Knox was more than proficient, both in the studio and live. In a lot of ways, according to Azzolini and Grassia, Knox’s energy and enthusiasm on the skins helped bring the band to a whole new level. Listen to the rapid snare hits on “Construction Worker” or the wild insanity on “Life on the Line” and you’ll see that life as a Golden Dog is just fine.

And that brings us back to the Horseshoe. With a concrete line-up for the first time, a batch of new songs under their belts and an adoring audience hanging on The Golden Dogs’ every word, the band has never looked better. During their raucous set they jumped effortlessly off amps, completed blistering solos without missing a note, and belted out harmonies like they were veteran rockers. When the show ended the crowd breathed a collective sigh of relief. Any more music and the hundreds of fans would have easily dehydrated, or maybe hyperventilated. As every good band does, The Dogs left their fans wanting more, and on August 15, when Big Eye Little Eye hits stores, they’re going to get a lot more than they bargained for.

Even though Everything In 3 Parts, the Golden Dogs’s 2003/2004 debut, is no more a fully conceived genesis than two compiled EPs can allow, I feel compelled to just reiterate and remind the audience of the fact that the sophomore debut is better. 3 Parts was good, and carried the burden of their churning, reverent live shows well, as far as I could tell. They sounded fun, from what I’ve been told, and when I imagine what kind of Super Furry animaled, Real Big fished, “Until the Day I…” dyed shows they probably put together in the Toronto scene, I like to think that their debut was a solid testament to their reputation. It’s all loud and loose but still eating shit in any manner of sugary melody; its catchiness flirts with anything it can grope. But, Big Eye Little Eye is just better. Even if it’s studio-man-ship, or some extra added fancy in their dynamics, or some manipulative honing of PR, this new one is good. Even if for no other reason than Eye’s wassailed wholeness, this new album fulfills every shameless expectation.

And God bless’em. Ya know? May angels touch their unholy, unrestrained hearts. They’ve cleaned up their gimmicks, wrung out the pop-ska aspirations, harmonized the crap out of every single intended copse of substructure, and they’ve come out irresistible. That’s pretty great. But seriously.

So, it kinda lulls in the middle, sags at the end, but is mostly juicy, snapping a fine line between intricate and shaggy. So, “Dynamo” grounds to a halt before it’s even set off, tumbling into some gurgling guitars, and big toms spin behind, and then Dave Azzolini and Jessica Grassia start screaming the song’s title, and that’s on top, cringing away from the gnarling guitars. That’s how it sounds a lot of the time, when the lead singer and the keyboardist, the hands that feed, are afraid of the feral underlings, and can only just barely maintain a strained buoyancy over the heads of the rest of the band. Sometimes the singer and co-singer/keyboard sink and are swallowed by the bass, or by Neil Quin’s solo, and “Never Meant Any Harm” ends up leeching a lot of melody out of the transition from effects-diddled intro into buried chorus. Sometimes a song like “Construction Worker” is all about harmony and the boy/girl handshaking seems just the right amount of smooth. Both occurrences yield engaging results and never end up straddling the sawhorses of other, more trite examples of unabashed indie rock. In other words, they save more than Ferris ever could.

Of course, the band can’t help but enact variety through obvious genre excursions. “Saints At The Gates” is all knobby knees and one mariachi horn away from the crappiest of Calexico’s lot, but the chorus, forgive me, is just fucking catchy. “Run Outta Luck” shuffles bass and praddles with B-52 vocals to no end, but is still fucking catchy. A cover of Paul McCartney’s “1985” flaunts scrappy '80s star charm, but is one shimmied catch. So, I must insist upon a point: the Golden Dogs glisten with applebummed, immediate, accessible, go-to, undeniable, incontrovertible catchiness.

The criticism simply ends there. The Dogs push no boundaries, and only a year after their debut, they’ve already crystallized, or matured, or dusted, or something else progressive and good. I must once again assert my original conviction, vindicating my decision in this disc’s superiority over its predecessor. As far as I can tell, the Dogs are used to endless, lazy comparisons anyway.

-Dom Sinacola, October 24, 2006

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