by Ben Hohenstatt (@Hohengramm)
SunDog found its soft side. The Anchorage, Alaska-based power trio tried something different on About You, their third and latest full-length album released on Dog Yard Records. Abi Sparkman (vocals/guitar), Philip Giannulis (drums) and Deven Lind (bass) embraced structure, technology, sentimental sounds and a somewhat protracted recording process while making the album. It’s a sign of hard-won maturation for a band that’s been together for the better part of a decade, and it yielded a polished, hook-filled LP that stands in contrast to the psych-tinged stomp of their previous releases.
That’s not to imply the road-tested rockers have gotten squishy or delivered a collection of weepy ballads. SunDog started with enough fuzzy texture that a little cleanup leaves behind plenty of grungy grit. Instead, by leaning into pop sensibilities, they’ve created an eight-song collection that would sound right at home in the rotation of your city’s coolest FM radio station circa 1995.
Lead single “Spinning Out,” is both an excellent encapsulation of About You’s sound and an album highlight. It’s jolted to life by a chugging riff from Sparkman before the crack of Giannulis’ drums and surging bass from Lind marshal the track toward takeoff. Its chorus sends the song hurtling skyward on a soaring declaration of codependence: “I could not be anything without you.” It’s a wallow that packs a wallop, and Sparkman sings it with power and emotion, howling the final two words in a way that’s destined to inspire shout-alongs and hoisted beverages in a live setting. The track’s 4-minute-13-second runtime allows ample opportunity for that chorus to take up residence deep within listeners’ skulls while avoiding monotony. It also provides space for Sparkman to commit feats of guitar heroism on what’s likely About You’s most satisfying solo.
While About You mostly finds SunDog working within a melodic milieu, the album starts with a feint toward sludgier sounds. Album opener “Play the Fool” begins with a sonorous buzz that practically oozes out of the speakers. A tune is found in that tone with encouragement from drums with bone-dry snap that would make the late Steve Albini proud. Fairly quickly, guitar with a deliciously serrated tone enters the fray, and the sounds coalesce into a mid-tempo rocker propelled by a driving bass line. It’s music that sounds sufficiently heavy to share space with Sparkman’s lyrics that yearn to break recriminatory cycles. While that might sound dour, the bass is simply too bouncy, and the totality of the music too fizzy, for things to get anywhere near slog territory.
“Play the Fool” is one of the oldest songs on the album, beginning its life as something Sparkman could perform solo with just an acoustic guitar. It underwent a half-decade or so of tweaks and revisions, and it was a near-cut from About You before its bass-blast beginning was worked out, and the song clinched its spot on the album. It’s a testament to SunDog’s creativity and execution that a song with a long-and-winding history doesn’t sound stitched together or overwrought. It’s also a testament to producer James Glave that the disparate sounds jibe so well. It’s not a one-off either. It’d be easy for About You’s songs to fall victim to thin production, but that simply never even comes close to happening. Every song sounds punchy, full, clean, and clear without being sterile.
“Out of Place” is a great example. The ode to existential otherness drifts in on a laconic conversation between Lind’s bass and Sparkman’s twangy guitar with Giannulis striking the balance between keeping the song moving and not overpowering the spare arrangement. Gradually, the song picks up steam, the space between chords shrinks, and it rushes headlong into a crunchy riff-chorus combo worthy of at least Wheatus, if not prime-era Weezer. The song hinges on subtle shifts, and it wouldn’t work if its chorus didn’t land like a haymaker. To the song’s immense benefit it’s performed and presented in a way that serves it well. Ditto that for “Permagrog,” which is simultaneously the most plodding and heaviest song on About You. An alchemical blend of reverb, feedback, and rafter-reaching “whoa-oh-ohs” achieve a slightly menacing, spacy atmosphere that’s equal parts zonked out and pissed off. It rules.
While a few songs on About You start slow, quiet, or both before gaining volume and inertia — “Out of Place,” “Fading Flower,” “Paint Me,” — its album-closer, “Smutt,” eschews that. Instead, it begins with its driving beat and jangly guitar fully formed. That song, a sort of road trip love story, is both lyrically and sonically the sweetest song on the album. It’s smooth, sweeping, and ties a bow on the album. It’s also a great marker of how much and how little SunDog have changed. In the how much column: adorably twee lyrics about love and travel (“keep your eyes on the road, not your hands to yourself,”) and instrumentation that sounds equally like the Pretenders and Japanese Breakfast. In the how little column: a reasonably searing guitar solo and an awful lot of room for an X-rated interpretation of how affection might be shown in a vehicle. The song’s title bolstering that second point.