Fat Dog Is Taking The Piss Out Of Post Punk

Exploring the strange, satirical world of South London’s most chaotic band as they unleash their debut album, WOOF.

by Stephan Boissonneault

Photos by Pooneh Ganah

Published on August 27, 2024

Before Joe Love, the lead singer of South London’s Fat Dog, appears on my screen, I have a preconceived idea of how this conversation will go. I think it’s going to be weird and challenging, with replies that will, to borrow the English expression, take the piss out of the whole interview process.

The music of Fat Dog is pure unbridled chaos. Call it industrial synth punk or futuristic post-punk with a bit of klezmer and you’re just scratching the surface. It’s music for the club. It’s music for the shady bathroom drug stall. It’s music with ambition and a ton of heart, led by musicians bored with everything else. But listening to the upcoming debut album WOOF. is one thing. Speaking with its creators is another.

You have to understand that this band’s marketing makes them seem like they don’t give a shit about press or accolades, so I’m ready for that. I also feel like Love will be this larger-than-life, wacky character that’s hard to pin down. But as he and his wildly unkempt mustache appear on my screen under moody lighting, he looks rather solemn.

“Fuck, man, I just watched The Father, and now, I’m sorry … but I’m in a rather grim mood.” For the uninitiated, The Father is a psychological drama starring Anthony Hopkins as a man living with dementia. As the film progresses, the environment changes and characters become stranger and stranger, while the film takes a rather dark turn. Luckily, I’ve seen The Father, so I know what Love is experiencing.

“Those kinds of movies just really make you question everything, y’know?” Love says. “It’s like, who the fuck am I, why do I matter? Do I even matter?”

As we ponder these existential, nihilistic questions, keyboardist and synth player Chris Hughes pops up on screen. Judging by the lighting and the pint of lager next to his screen, he seems to be in a dive bar. The screen keeps cutting in and out, and with the flickering lighting, the whole scene feels like a horror movie.

“Fuck, Chris, it looks like you’ve been abducted or something,” Love says.

“I have. I’m with a new band,” Hughes jokes.

“Well, good. We no longer need you at Fat Dog,” Love replies with a laugh.

We all laugh and it seems to brighten up Love’s bleak demeanor.

Hughes joined Fat Dog as the synth player in 2022, but actually auditioned for the band as a viola player after he heard they were looking for one. So, being a musician full of gumption, he bought a viola online and learned it in a week. The audition was worse than bad, but the band and Hughes went to the pub afterward and he eventually found his role behind the keys.

“It came from a bit of arrogance trying to fool them,” Hughes laughs. “Or maybe it was tenacity, but I remember Joe couldn’t look me in the fucking eyes.”

“I can’t look you in the eyes now,” Love jokes.

This kind of verbal jousting between Love and Hughes feels somewhat like what is heard on WOOF. — a satirical stab at musical normalcy.

Right from the beginning, we are promised a very specific, mythical, almost cataclysmic concept album, with a narrator taking his job too seriously—like he’s a medieval illuminator. Then we burst into “Vigilante,” an EDM punk banger that feels like it’s been plunged into the desert. It’s as ludicrous as it is hilarious.

“We wanted to get people to wear tin foil hats for a bit,” Hughes says. “If you get a Northern Englishman to say big enough words for a bit, you make people think it’s more profound than it really is.”

“Vigilante” also sets the tone for Fat Dog’s musical impetus on WOOF. Close to every song uses the harmonic minor scale, giving the music this quality that almost feels like Hollywood’s typical take on anything Arabic—you know, like when any character steps into a desert. It’s something that Love wanted from day one when he was working on the debut songs during the pandemic.

“I wanted it to sound like we were in the fucking pyramids or something, I just like that sound,” Love says. “I had no clue what I was doing and I’m useless at music theory, I just wanted pyramids.”

“It’s nice on the fingers too ‘cause you don’t have to stretch too much, so we were saving ourselves from carpal tunnel,” Hughes laughs.

It’s quite amazing how far Fat Dog has gone prior to the release of their debut album. They’ve opened for bands like Viagra Boys and Yard Act and been interviewed by Rolling Stone. It’s all relative, but in the music world, it is a big deal, and contrary to their marketing, it’s still very weird for Hughes and Love.

“I just did an interview this morning from Japan and it’s crazy to me that they are listening to Fat Dog there. Like I’m just a human guy who plays keyboards in a band,” Hughes says.

“We will be yesterday’s news soon,” Love says. “Some new band, probably English, will come along, kill us, eat our hearts, and take our powers.”