Fat Dog is a South London band led by frontman Joe Love, who started making music for the project during the first lockdown in 2020. Having clocked time in a post-punk outfit, his goal was to make something more electronic that would eventually be backed by a full band. Over time, Fat Dog expanded into a quintet with Chris Hughes (synths and keys), Ben Harris (bass), Johnny Hutchinson (drums), and Morgan Wallace (keys and saxophone). After cutting their teeth at the Windmill Brixton and supporting the likes of Viagra Boys, shame, and Yard Act, the band signed a deal with Domino and worked with in-demand producer James Ford (whose 2024 run has included the new Fontaines D.C., The Last Dinner Party, and Beth Gibbons albums), who co-produced their debut album WOOF., out today, with Love and Jimmy Robertson. With the brash seven-minute epic ‘King of the Slugs’ – the first single they ever put out, which careens from dance-punk to klezmer ska – serving as its centerpiece, the LP does more than capture the group’s frenzied live energy – it stands out from the pack. As infectious as it is idiosyncratic, both apocalyptically and cartoonishly rambunctious, WOOF. is just a little more unhinged and unpretentious than most bands coming from the art-rock scene would allow it to be. It just keeps buzzing, and you can’t help but run alongside it.
We caught up with Fat Dog’s Chris Hughes and Joe Love for the latest edition of our Artist Spotlight series to talk about their latest shows, the band’s dynamic, their debut LP, and more.
Given that you used to play new songs on tour before recording them, how have you adapted to the live dynamic of having multiple singles from the album released?
Chris Hughes: Having music out definitely changes something because once it’s out, that’s the song — that’s the benchmark on which you have to base a lot of things. Because of releasing singles, we’ve actually changed the way we play a lot of the live music and developed it quite a bit. I think these songs are finished in the sense that they’re on an album, and people will know those songs as they are. But in many ways, we’re always trying to develop as much as we can live out of the things we’ve done recorded. Also, we didn’t really have any set lyrics most of the time until we started releasing the songs, and then those have only one kind of lyric. Whereas before, Joe used to ad-lib quite a lot of lyrics for a lot of the songs. He still does it a bit, and it’s still quite fun, but it used to be completely made up based on any joke we had going in the van that day. That was always really fun. But it’s quite a strange thing knowing there’s this set-in-stone, so to speak, canon for every song, both lyrically and musically, that people are going to be basing their thoughts on us by. That’s a big change because it used to be we could kind of wing anything, and now it has to be much more consistent. But we try to bring some dynamism to it in some ways.
You’ve just played a series of European festivals, and I’m curious what your takeaway has been from seeing how people react to the music even if they’re not responding to the lyrics in the same way English-speaking audiences might.
CH: Because a lot of the lyrics are quite cryptic in meaning, it’s almost more about the rhythm of the lyrics than anything. I think that’s the important thing about Fat Dog — having that strong rhythmic sense means that, regardless of what language someone speaks, they can feel the energy and the gut-punch of the lyrics. What’s also interesting is seeing how different cultures watch music and go to gigs. For example, the Swiss, when we played in Switzerland – they’ll enjoy it, but they’ll be kind of dry and uptight. Whereas when we played in Italy for the first time, in Sicily, those guys were wild. The Dutch take some time to get going, but once they do, they’re quite wild. Belgians love a good time. There are all these little nuances in how different cultures go out and see music, probably because of their cultural upbringing. There’s a certain politeness or a certain freeness in different cultures, and I find that really interesting. Especially with the kind of music we play, it’s nice to see what it brings out of people.
You can see them loosening up.
CH: Yeah, exactly. We kind of know which countries, when we’re playing gigs, we’ll have to work extra hard for. Sometimes it’s like every bone in their body is fighting against them doing anything weird. That’s why I jump in the crowd and pretend to be a crab. part of the crowd. It’s an absurd thing, but I think it breaks down people’s barriers a bit. If someone in the band is out in the crowd and making a complete fool of themselves, it helps people loosen up. So, that’s a good thing.
[Joe Love has joined the Zoom call.] Joe, what’s your experience been with the recent festival shows?
JL: Some of them have been good, some not so good. In Holland and Belgium, people knew the words to the songs, which is kind of weird, but it’s a nice feeling.
CH: Mr. Worldwide.
JL: [laughs] Mr. Worldwide.
In the bio for WOOF., you’re quoted as telling Domino you didn’t want a bio. It’s obviously a joke, but I’m curious if it comes from a kind of skepticism around the tendency to narrativize bands.
JL: Kind of. I think it’s a bit cringe when bands talk about themselves and it sounds like they’re talking in the third person. It’s weird because it’s like you’re hyping yourself up, and they’re talking about the music like they’re some sort of—
CH: Third party.
JL: It’s like the way that you advertise a wedding band or something.
CH: That’s fine, I think it’s the way that other people talk about—
JL: Give me an example.
CH: I don’t know, you hear something, and it’s very, very pretentious. That’s the worst thing, pretentiousness.
JL: Oh, yeah. The whole thing is – talking about music is a load of bullshit. There’s two different types of people: people who just bang on about music all the time—
CH: We spend a lot of time talking about music.
JL: But in a different sort of way. Talking about songs that you love is different from talking about the process of music and other people’s process.
CH: Yeah, that’s true. At the point where you’re doing it, you’re not thinking about how you’re doing it. You’re just doing it.
You started Fat Dog as a result of pandemic boredom. When did you start to feel the sense of excitement kick in?
JL: I think there’s always excitement for me – that’s the reason for making music, when you’re like, “Wow, this is actually kind of cool.” It’s really nice when you make something like that, and you listen to it afterward and go like, “I can do something with this.” You’re always kind of thinking about what people will think about it, like, “I think people are going to lose their shit.”
CH: Really nice feeling.
Do you ever get bored while making music, and if so, how do you stave off that feeling?
JL: People say it’s like 10% inspiration and 90% just working, trying to make it feel good. And yeah, getting that 10% is exciting, but I’ve never made a song, it’s finished, and it was like, “I understand now, that was fucking easy. That was lovely.”
CH: I think what it possibly is is you’re doing a lot of production stuff rather than just playing an instrument. There’s all these little minute things, like, “I need to pitch down that one drum note a little bit more.” That shit I find fucking hard to abide by, it takes fucking ages. Even if you’ve got a song, that kind of thing takes so long. The person who listens to the song hears the song immediately, but the number of hours that go into making one song – people forget about it a lot of times.
JL: You listen back to it sometimes and you think, there was no point losing time doing that thing, because it’s all in the head.
Chris, I know you were a fan of the band before joining. I’d love to hear both of your perspectives on how that came about.
CH: Well, I’d seen Fat Dog play a few times, and I thought they were always one of the coolest things I’d seen. I’d been playing in some really shit bands for a while, hanging out with people who talk a lot about doing stuff but never really do anything. And I was like, “These guys seem to be doing something, it’d be really nice to be a part of that band.” I asked the old synth player if they needed a viola or anything. In my head, I was like, “I don’t even play like that, but maybe if I try hard enough, I can learn it in a very short time.” I tried that, it didn’t go very well. Joe couldn’t even look me in the eye during that audition. But he liked that I worked hard and stuff. Later down the line, they were like, “We need a synth player now.” And I was like, “I kinda actually play keys alright. I’ll do that.”
JL: He brings a lot of energy live, and that’s good.
How would you describe your dynamic when you’re rehearsing or brainstorming ideas? Do you feel like you balance out each other’s tendencies?
JL: I think I’m quite introverted, and Chris is quite extroverted.
CH: That’s not true.
JL: Well, you’re quite social.
CH: It’s my job to be social.
JL: Is it? Why is it your job to be social?
CH: Because you’re not. And you can’t be forced to be social, but I can.
JL: He’s my social guy, anyway. You are social – what did you do yesterday? You went to meet your friends at the pub.
CH: Yeah, but that’s not like a social thing. This is our dynamic – it’s all healthy and good. Pub’s not really social, though.
JL: He’s a chatter. It helps to have someone like that; he’s the heart of the band.
CH: That’s very kind of you. I think everyone’s got their quirk in the band, and being in a van for long periods of time, it’s important to keep morale up between all of us. And sometimes, that’s just a matter of having noise-canceling headphones. You gotta make sure you’re not constantly picking people off. I know some bands where that’s just the norm.
JL: But to be fair, I don’t think we’d be going much longer if we weren’t actually quite chill people, or quite introverted, which means that we need time to ourselves. And if we didn’t have that, I’d go fucking mental.
CH: Yeah, we do need time to ourselves. But we’re good at finding that balance.
You’ve described WOOF. as a kind of loose concept album, but you’ve also said you want to make the opposite of “thinking music.” Does it get tricky trying to toe that line, or having to stop yourselves before things get too conceptual?
CH: It’s a struggle every day.
JL: To be fair, we just made the best thing we could.
CH: That thing I said about not making thinking music has come back to haunt me like an ancient ancestor in every interview I’ve done. But what I meant was more like, it’s the kind of music that you feel in your gut, and it takes you out of your own head a bit. I don’t want people to think we’re a bunch of cavemen just running around the studio. A lot of thought went into the actual songs, but because of that, the listener can come out of their own head a bit. Music you feel in your stomach – that’s kind of what I meant by that, rather than music you go, “Oh, listen to that lyric.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Fat Dog’s WOOF. is out now via Domino.