It requires a second glance at the press release to confirm that Dog Is Dead’s debut album, All Our Favourite Stories, was only released six months ago, in October 2012. This band’s infectious hooks, four-part harmonies and soaring solos seem like they’ve been around forever, and we certainly can’t imagine how we got by before they burst onto the scene. We caught up with bassist (and saxophonist!) Lawrence ‘Trev’ Cole, one of the three founding members of Dog Is Dead, now a five piece to see what was going on with the band ahead of their new headline UK tour.
Beginning at the beginning, Trev tells us how the band came into being, meeting at school in Nottingham and playing “Jamie T covers and talent shows”. We don’t ask whether the saxophone found its way into any Jamie T covers, but it’s certainly clear that their music has come a long way since those days. One of the most distinctive parts of Dog Is Dead’s sound is their use of powerful, almost choir-like four-part harmonies, and Trev explains that although this lends a folky feel to the songs on occasion, they are ”definitely not New Folk”. It’s a movement that he says the band has a lot of respect for, but Dog Is Dead’s music is more about “making good pop music and putting our own weird angle on it”.
He really opens up as our conversation turns to the aspects of being in a band which he evidently enjoys the most. He explains that a Dog Is Dead gig is basically just “five guys losing their shit on stage” and speaks of his love of the “wild abandon” of a music festival where “everyone’s looking for a party”. The final track on All Our Favourite Stories, an outtake track from the studio, shows more of the band’s funny side. A highlight is a heated argument among the band about keyboardist Joss Van Wilder’s views on Italian (“it’s basically just French with ‘o’s on the end”). Telling the story behind this extraordinary exchange, Trev explains that for single ‘Talk Through The Night’ they wanted it to have a party track in the background, but had to make it themselves. This process moved swiftly from “surrounding one mic [making] awkward party noises” to the band chatting among themselves to the moment when “Joss sprang that one on the group and things got a bit… heated”. This all adds up to something that Trev really wants to be made known, that the band have a good time, explaining that when he was younger he always preferred it if the band he liked looked like they were enjoying themselves. It’s clear from our conversation that Lawrence Cole is loving life in Dog Is Dead both on stage and in the studio and he’s right, that does make us that little bit happier.
