A Giant Dog

A Giant Dog

Bite

Merge

***The moment the needle drops on Bite, the new A Giant Dog record, one’s conception of what an A Giant Dog record sounds like bends like space and time around a starship running at lightspeed. The biggest point of departure is that Bite is a concept album, concerning characters who find themselves moving in and out of a virtual reality called Avalonia. A Giant Dog’s first album of original songs since 2017’s Toy, Bite finds the band—Sabrina Ellis, Andrew Cashen, Danny Blanchard, Graham Low, and Andy Bauer—at their peak as musicians, challenging themselves with more complex arrangements and subject matter that forced them out of their heads and into those of the characters who occupy this supposed paradise. “We had to find ourselves within, or project ourselves into, the principal characters. We developed them, got to know their minds, emotions, and motivations, and then expressed those in nine songs,” Ellis explains. Themes of addiction, gender fluidity, living ethically in a capitalist society, physical autonomy, avarice, grief, and consent bubble beneath the promised happiness of Avalonia. This is evident in songs like “Different Than,” where Ellis sings, “My body can’t explain the things my mind don’t comprehend” as if societal gender pressure is squeezing its protagonist out of their skin. The songs on Bite are full of bombast, at turns calling to mind the spacefaring operatic rock of Electric Light Orchestra and the high drama of an Ennio Morricone film score. The album’s narrative sweep is epic in scope, its characters...

A Giant Dog

Bone

Merge

***This summer, Merge will reissue A Giant Dog’s first two full- lengths—2012’s Fight and 2013’s Bone—worldwide on limited edition colored vinyl, reintroducing the world to the quintet Spoon’s Britt Daniel calls “the greatest American rock and roll / punk band since I don’t know when.” Recording for the first time with a proper producer (Mike McCarthy) in a proper environment (a studio lol), A Giant Dog Bone, on pink vinyl for the reissue, still manages to kool-aid man its way through the speakers with the immediacy of the band’s live shows, a hit parade for the party people. Sabrina Ellis and Andrew Cashen add another baker’s dozen tunes to the band’s repertoire just a year following their debut, with songs like “All I Wanted,” “Dammit Pomegranate,” and “Another World” cementing them as a conspicuous songwriting duo.

A Giant Dog

Fight

Merge

***This summer, Merge will reissue A Giant Dog’s first two full- lengths—2012’s Fight and 2013’s Bone—worldwide on limited edition colored vinyl, reintroducing the world to the quintet Spoon’s Britt Daniel calls “the greatest American rock and roll / punk band since I don’t know when.” Celebrating its tenth birthday in 2022 is A Giant Dog Fight, the Texas group’s hard-to-find debut album, remixed, remastered, and pressed on green vinyl just for the occasion. All the trademark tenets of AGD lore are on display at the jump: monstrously adorable album art and punny title, whip-smart songwriting dolled up in denim and leather, boiled down to the sweetest moments and blown out to the masses with bravado to spare. Upon Fight’s original release, the local Austin Chronicle raved: “The raucous, low-rent squall quakes with affirmative abandon, while a just-right dose of pop girds the buzz and yowl.

A Giant Dog

Toy

Merge

***CHECK STOCK!!!  Received a 7.4 rating from Pitchfork.  Toy, the fourth LP from A GIANT DOGand their second for Merge, shows the Austin quintet at the height of their powers. A solid year of road-dogging and woodshedding has made the band tighter than ever, the charging dynamo of ANDREW CASHEN and ANDY BAUER's guitars in lockstep with the primal chug of the rhythm section of GRAHAM LOW on bass and DANIEL BLANCHARD on drums, in the latter’s recorded debut. Lead singer SABRINA ELLIS  turns in another masterful performance, in equal parts brash, defiant, vulnerable, and raw. Lyrically, Sabrina and Andrew have a gift for making their personal frustrations and fuck-ups, fears, lusts, and addictions feel universal. While they have always given voice to the weirdos and creeps—showing that their peccadilloes and peculiarities are much more deep-seated and widespread—they dig even deeper on Toy.Still, the band doesn’t sacrifice an ounce of catchiness or charm when tackling issues like aging, agency, and mortality. (STREET DATE - 8/25/2017) 

A Giant Dog

Pile

Merge

***Forging their friendships in the crucible of their Houston, TX, high school, SABRINA ELLIS (vocals), ANDREW CASHEN (vocals, guitar), and ORVILLE NEELEY (drums) first got their start covering AC/DC, The Ramones, Joan Jett, and the finer points of the Back to the Future soundtrack at school dances under the band name YOUTH IN ASIA. Reuniting in Austin in 2008, they enlisted their pals ANDY BAUER (guitar) and GRAHAM LOW (bass) and christened the act A GIANT DOG (AGD). AGD is raucous ear candy culled from the hook-driven melodies of Slade, the glammy swagger of Marc Bolan, the morbid fantasy of Killer-era Alice Cooper, and the unpredictable wit of Sparks. These songs are by, for, and about the losers, freaks, and outcasts. The lonely. The terminally horny. Boozehounds and party animals. No band better speaks to the hearts of slackers, burnouts, rockers, sluts, and creeps everywhere than A Giant Dog. In 2012, AGD impressed fellow Austinite and Spoon frontman BRITT DANIEL enough that he took them under his wing. Pile, AGD’s third LP and first for Merge Records, shows a band whose years of road-dogging have honed them into unstoppable rock machines. Their second time working with producer MIKE MCCARTHY (Spoon, White Denim, Trail of Dead) reveals Sabrina’s impressive pipes, Andrew’s sweet licks, and a pummeling rhythm section—everything is tighter, more focused, crisper. The album deals with divorce, getting older, dying, frustration, and futility, ultimately transcending those earthly headaches through the power of rock’n’roll.