Dog Chocolate’s new album So Inspired, So Done In is serious fun. Arch, conceptual and as angular as a geometry set. Instruments jerk and spasm and the anxious vocals are a tumble of half-sung-half-barked lyrics that feel like poetry that wants to start a fight. Things often sound like they are on the verge of collapse but this is a band that might drive the twisting mountain road at 90 mph but will never drop off the edge. This is ruck and roll, drunken Jenga…exhilarating stuff.
If you want to unlock the mysteries of wonderfully titled songs like ‘Infinite Nuggets’, ‘Potatoes in the Basement Bin’, ‘Munchies and a Pen’ and ‘Guildford Awkward’ (and you should) then Dog Chocolate (Andrew – vocals, Rob – guitar, vocals, Matthew – guitar, vocals and Jonathan – drums) have been kind enough to give Joyzine readers a track by track guide of the album.
1: Infinite Nuggets
Andrew – The song is about those times where something comes to mind outside of your conscious control, and about that abyss that chucked it up.
“I realized then that a man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He would have enough memories to keep him from being bored“. From Camus’ L’ Étranger.
I’m not talking about memories so much, rather creative ideas but I think the concept applies
Jonathan – The stomp of Andrew singing the “Nuggets! Nuggets! Infinite Nuggets! I didn’t make ‘em I found ‘em” chorus is great. It always makes me smile.
Matthew – As I recall, Andrew and Jonathan had recorded a vocals and drums take and sent to me and Rob. Some of the songs were written like this. Rob came to my house in the middle of nowhere in Scotland at the time and we worked out some parts from there. I had happened to have a dream the night before in which we were playing a gig and I was playing a bassline in that dream, which I woke up with in my head. That’s the bassline to the song.
2: Fun is Always Brilliant
Rob – Andrew had long floated this as a song title and suggested it would be our shot at being a One Hit Wonder. We pressured him to write the lyrics and the rest of us made the most bouncy boingy music we could.
Andrew – I meant the lyrics to be universal and un-pick-apart-able, like happy birthday or I love you baby, walking down the street yeah yeah, or something, but it got really specific, contemplative and personal very quickly… The title almost becomes an idea I’m responding to, rather than MY statement.
I wanted to choose real moments that felt like ultimate fun. Important to that category turned out to be experiences that were action packed, loud, full of people, rebellious, slightly dangerous… Then I came round to reflecting on how ultimate fun in the world of early fatherhood I’m now in has very different characteristics, and how perspectives, definitions, expectations evolve, gradually or suddenly… It was written when my daughter was really young and I was really shell shocked. It’s hard to not see beyond your current reality, nothing has taught me impermanence like becoming a parent. My partner, our daughter and I overdubbed a rattle/bell/hang drum jam for this one, it seemed fitting.
3: Employee
Rob – I had the riffs and chorus vocals, and I brought them to a band practice for the others to fill in. The lyrics for the chorus came from my job at the time which was working in a health centre as a self-employed counsellor for a third-party contractor for the NHS. Being spoken to like I was an employee, but being treated like I wasn’t. It’s Uberised jobs in all industries now. It’s people feeling like they’re in the worst of both worlds – without job security of a permanent contract, but also without the real sense of autonomy that self-employment might bring. Being kind of in the middle, feeling precarious and powerless.
Andrew – It’s like Amateurs Forever part 2 for me; snotty, optimistic, hyperactive vim is replaced with trudging, glum reluctance… The two songs are a pre and post COVID couplet…
Jonathan – Rob suggested the very satisfying surf-y drum beat for the chorus, and when Andrew sings the verses live, I love the feeling of playing sort of behind his delivery. It feels coooool. Ha ha!
Matthew – I recall Rob having this quite planned out. There’s so much space in the guitar that it was just itching for a rolling bassline. There’s something monotonous yet rhythmically satisfying in playing this.
4: Springfield Library Haunting
Rob – In 2022, half the band were living in the central belt of Scotland and the other half were in London so we decided to meet somewhere in the middle for a weekend to write songs. The middle turned out to be Shropshire, and we stayed in this little 2 room cottage. When we asked the owners if we could write music there, they said “sure, we just happen to have a massive shed with a PA system that we sometimes do a festival in”. This seemed to be fate shining on us. The shed was incredibly cold and we played with our puffa hoods up among a collection of steampunk vehicles and a large dog that would run in during songs demanding to have a ball thrown for it. I had been listening to the B-52’s a lot at the time and I think this came out in my riff for this song.
Andrew – This is another one about messy brains, a bombardment of information from within the bonce. Images from childhood, loaded with atmosphere and half memories creep up and shove you in the back. The named library was supposed to be a study safehouse as a teen, but everything about it made it more difficult to focus, and for some unknown reason, it still pops into my head in moments of weakness. I did catch it by rare chance getting demolished a few years ago…
Jonathan – Jeff Koons is mentioned on this one, and I’ve not told you this Andrew, but I always think you’re making a reference to his balloon animal sculptures when you say you found the book next to some balloons. Am I right?
Andrew – I hear now how it sounds like the book was next to balloons but no, IN the book, you have those balloon sculptures, yeah. But it’s what the book showed alongside the balloons that was a little more distracting… the work he did with his then wife..? Ilona Staller? That’s what I didn’t expect!
Jonathan– Aha!
5: Drumming on a Tree with FM
Rob – Another Shropshire shed song. I remember trying to make what I was playing clash dissonantly against Matthew’s. I feel like we might be playing the same riff a semitone apart from each other. I’m using a chorus pedal, which is the first time I’ve used a pedal in Dog Chocolate in 13 years. Felt like a big deal.
Andrew – This is a series of moments from working at an autism specialist college, written study of in the style of the setting… For confidentiality we would just use initials. I’ve changed the initials for further confidentiality. On the surface it’s a series of ridiculous vignettes but it’s really about futile communication, the struggle to be heard and understood; everything from sensory needs to being paid fairly for your work…In our barn, we were wondering if there was a new name for the popular game of whispering a message person to person down the line, we thought of Generative Mutation
Jonathan – On the record, I actually come in at the wrong part. So if you buy the record, you’ll be in possession of a one off. Because I never make mistakes. Ever.
Matthew – I think Grime was a major inspiration for this song. I wanted it to sound dirty. The problem is, I have several fuzz effects and don’t remember which one I used! Maybe I’ll work that out in time for the next gigs.
6: Potatoes in the Basement Bin
Rob – I brought the guitar part and chorus vocals to Matthew’s house, he wrote his guitar part and the lyrics to the verse he sings. At practice in Deptford Jonathan and Andrew wrote their parts. The title and my lyrics are a reference to Carl Rogers’ concept of the Actualising Tendency. This is the idea that all organisms (including humans) are striving towards emotional, spiritual and physical growth, and are in a constant state of becoming. However if the conditions of your life are not set up for growth, for example if you are experiencing societal oppression or state-controlled incarceration then it’s more difficult to be your full self, even if you will still strive towards growth. Rogers’ famous metaphor for this is potatoes that have been chucked away in a cellar but whose tendrils still grow towards a tiny window of light above.
Matthew – My verse links lived experiences of working in basements and various windowless rooms, with only faulty buzzing strip lights for company, leading to a sense of thought destroying servitude and exhaustion in-keeping with the overall theme of the song. I used to sit downstairs in a record shop writing on CD wallets all day to catalogue them (I loved that job though). I also had an office under some stairs when I worked in a library and I used to get regular migraines from the bad lighting. I remember having to get some groceries on my way home with a migraine once and I couldn’t look at the self-service machine.
7: Fungal Free 2023
Andrew – This is Foot Problems part 2. Written in 2022, about aspirations for the following year… it betrays aspirations for a release date for the record by too lol
Rob – We love a callback to our old songs and we’ve referenced our previous songs before. I love this update on Andrew’s feet and the way it relates to his life generally. Often when writing songs we’re trying to make each other laugh and the end of this one, with it’s repeated re-starts of 1-2-3-4 was an example of this.
8: Green Stuff
Rob – Matthew brought the guitar parts, some lyrics and the concept of the song to practice. We have agreed that it’s a pop punk song, our first perhaps? Matthew was thinking about the way that however humans alter the earth, plants will always take over and tear our buildings apart given enough time. Three of us sing our own lyrics in this track. It’s one of a few of our “conversation” songs where we float different angles and lightly disagree with each other. In the first draft of my verse I was singing all about the scene in the movie Logan’s Run where they first leave the biodome and it’s Washington DC but now it’s a jungle. But I changed it to challenge the metaphor of war in the song.
Matthew – I think this is maybe the oldest song on the record? There’s some pre-COVID gig footage of us playing it. I think I mostly wrote the music on my phone, which is something I’ve done a few times before, then had to work out how to actually play it on a guitar. I think I was heavily listening to The Wagon by Dinosaur Jr at the time, hence the phaser wooshing through in the choruses.
9: Architecture Days
Andrew – Sometimes, usually when on a train, I suddenly tune into the shapes of the buildings going past, particularly the rooftops, and anything that is kinda inside-outside. I picture myself navigating the rooftop landscape, living in the forgotten space between buildings, and it calls to mind temporary architecture, self builds, farm houses that I’ve seen and fallen in love with on holiday, but also a game I’d play as a kid at home, imagining gravity is flipped… The song has always seemed angrier than it’s supposed to be, it’s about the excitement of playing with spatial and micro-environmental ideas.
Rob – One of the noisier/heavier songs on the album and one of the earliest written in the set. Often it seems important to have the music relate to the emotions in the lyrics, but I think it’s quite nice to have a contrast sometimes. I’ve always liked happy songs with sad lyrics (like Tears of a Clown by Smokey Robinson, or Hey Ya by Outkast) so maybe an angry song with playful lyrics works too?
Matthew – We had a go at recording this remotely during lockdown and it came out very weak in comparison. I think Toby and Sofia really made this sound as explosive as was intended.
10: Munchies and a Pen
Andrew – This must be one of the oldest songs on the record, like the lyrics say, it was written, taken apart, re-written, forgotten, re-written… Most of the chorus is about the song itself, and the rest of the song is mostly about being in the band, told in three acts – The way home, buzzing, alone after a gig, a failed attempt at a photoshoot at a farm, and a draining “tour” of France… That’s not even it though, it’s too much and nonstop!
Rob – Often Andrew brings a full set of lyrics for the band to write music to and has an idea of the various textures that he imagines against sets of lines. This can be a really fun challenge and very satisfying when we get it all together. This song felt like loads of little bits, with some sections that repeated a phrase 4 times then 3 the next time, changes in speed, etc. Now it feels like it couldn’t be any other way.
Jonathan – I think this is my favourite song to play live. I was on the Eurotunnel train again the other day. This might sound arbitrary, but I had to buy a bag of walnuts in a supermarket once I arrived in France.
Matthew – This song is a puzzle and hurts my brain to play, but I love it.
11: Guildford Awkward
Andrew – This song is an account of this particular weird interaction me and Jonathan witnessed by chance
Rob – A Shropshire shed song that came together fairly quickly. I remember Andrew being very particular about the clangy dissonant bits at the end, that they should sound more awkward or uncomfortable to fit the feeling of the lyrics. It took some time to get that right.
Matthew – Yes, the ending is supposed to be the sound of a cringe.
12: No Pavement Story
Andrew – I feel like this was just a piece of writing that became lyrics. It’s about stepping up off a pavementless road, to avoid the occasional cars and getting hopelessly lost… It’s kind of an allegory for an Outsider trying to survive in a world that’s not for them, and kind of just trying to capture this bonkers moment on my way home from work. I put the track together on the computer, sampling Jonathan’s drums from another song and adding that to the keyboard beat that was originally just there to keep time.
Matthew – We did try to make this more songy with instruments at first but I think this captures the kind of challenging mess of tangled branches Andrew got himself into better.
13: Worst Jobs in History
Rob – I brought this to the band mostly finished, but Matthew wrote his lovely guitar part which totally changed the feel of the song, giving it a welcome melancholy. The lyrics are a whole mix of things which feel related to each other. The title is taken from a tv programme from the early 2000s presented by Tony Robinson that really annoyed me. In the song I’m wandering around the remains of an Iron Age settlement in a local park and questioning the information panel telling me about how life was then. There’s a bit about the climate crisis in there, a bit about the Marxist concept of Alienation. But mostly it’s about the way we tell bogus stories about how we’ve “progressed” as humans and that the time we live in is the “luckiest” or most comfortable. I think it’s bullshit.
Matthew – I concur.
14: Unfinished Rock ‘N’ Roll Tattoo
Andrew – This is about an old pal who in his youth had gotten those iconic words tattooed right across his chest but yeah, it was only half filled in. His lifestyle, or priorities changed and now it’s a monument to commitment, past and present… I got a bit obsessed with it, and what it might represent, THOSE words, presented in THAT way… I think I’ve thought about it a lot more than he has.
Rob – This song was one of a few that Andrew and Jonathan wrote vocals and drums together and then sent as a voice note to the band group chat on Telegram. Me and Matthew got together at his house and wrote guitar parts to these songs. When we sent our guitar voice note back, Jonathan said it brought a lump to his throat.
Jonathan – It did.
Matthew – Haha. I remember you wanting to wail on it but Andrew vetoed it.
15: A Bit of Paper
Andrew – The words were written in situ, on the overground coming back down to New Cross, I didn’t know what the bit of paper was while I was writing. It was just a game almost, and a story written in real time. Then when I picked up the paper, I stuck it in the book next to the words about wanting to pick up that bit of paper. It was also never meant to be lyrics, and the second half of the lyrics is just what was on the bit of paper.
Rob – I love Jonathan’s syncopated drums, reminds me of a Moondog percussion part or something. I’ve no idea if we’re all playing in the same time signature or not. If I listen to the drums and the other guitar too closely I always lose my place, so it’s almost like I just have to listen out of the corner of my eye to stay in time.
Jonathan – Wow! Moondog is a very generous link. I like the way this song sits with the other songs. In my mind, it’s partly a reminder that there are oodles of different ways to arrive at a finished song.
Matthew – This is a bit of a fave for me. The way the guitars and drums kind of circulate and stretch in and out of time. As Rob said, it’s very easy to lose your place playing it but that’s part of the fun.
16: So Inspired, So Done In
Andrew – I assume this is something we all get? This fizzy, directionless state of creative urgency at a moment of exhaustion, or illness…? Maybe it’s the kinda signing off from duties that opens up the floodgates of ideas, or the mild delirium, or the weird comfort that you can’t be held to fulfill anything, that gives you permission to start making some ambitious plans… Anyway, it’s a song about being full of ideas and empty of energy
Rob – My favourite part to play in this song is doing the Paul McCartney/Little Richard style WOOO in the chorus.
Matthew – I love the “Wooo” too. I originally envisaged this being a psychedelic song with a constant pulse running through it. We used to start it with a big wash of noise (probably just because I wanted to use all my pedals at once) but removed that. It’s quite delicate initially, which is kind of unlike anything else we’ve done before. I love the ending. There’s something infectiously joyous about syncopated, chanted vocals.
So Inspired, So Done In is available on Bandcamp and through Upset the Rhythm and you can read Jess Milner’s review for Joyzine here.
Dog Chocolate: Instagram / Website / Bandcamp
Header photo taken by Guy Bolongaro.
Introduction by Paul F Cook
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