For about six months when I was twelve or thirteen years old, I thought that Dog Day was the coolest band on the planet. Following the release of their near-perfect 2009 LP Concentration, husband-and-wife dream team Seth Smith and Nancy Urich became my first indie crushes—downcast melodies, fashionably handmade paraphernalia, gloomy band photos and all. I used to spend my nights binge-reading Halifax-based blogs, hitting repeat on Bandcamp and Myspace pages and dreaming of one day being half as cool as the people in these bands that I admired so much. Though it was being made only fifteen minutes down the road, something about the music of late-aughts Halifax felt distant, as if it inhabited a different level of coolness that my suburban existence could never achieve.
Of course, that world was an illusion; as I grow closer to becoming the person I so desperately wanted to be five years ago, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the image and lifestyle I idolized as a preteen isn’t always as great as it had seemed. That’s not to say I was completely misguided—I’ve discovered even more to love about the local scene as I’ve gotten more involved, and I’m sure I’d have been thrilled to discover as a twelve-year-old the person I’ve become today. But I do sort of miss that lovely, soft-focus image of Halifax’s arts community that I once held.
Naturally, things change: I’m now seventeen, Dog Day are about to mark one decade of shared musical existence and have just put out their fourth album, Fade Out. I’ll admit that the album’s announcement initially caused me more apprehension than excitement; the band’s last album, 2011’s Deformer, was good but personally unremarkable, leaving me with lowered expectations for their latest. Even the album’s title—those two imperative, powerful words—left me wondering if the band’s tenure was nearing its inevitable conclusion. Leading up to my first listen of the record, I had convinced myself that it was the logical next step for a band who, after putting out a few memorable but somewhat homogeneous releases, had simply run their course. Living in Halifax, I’m used to such a feeling; like many university towns, we’re a city in a constant state of flux. A new crop of youth arrive annually to rejuvenate our creative cosmos, only to depart four years later, degree in hand, leaving little more than a couple of Bandcamp releases behind in a city that fostered and supported their creativity. That constantly shifting energy is exciting at times, but it also lends an unfortunate sense of impermanence to almost everything that gets created here.
It’s to Dog Day’s great credit, then, that they sound as vital today as they first did to me a half decade ago. For most of the record the band is energetic and on point, mining elements of grunge, shoegaze and golden-era East Coast indie to assemble an easygoing, coherent collection. “Joyride” glides, “Sunset” glows and “Wasted” absolutely smashes; for twelve songs, Fade Out is simply very, very good.
But, thankfully, the record doesn’t end there. “Before Us” swoops in as unassuming number thirteen and reaches highs Dog Day have rarely reached before. It’s so gentle yet so immediate; each guitar strum presses forward with an urgency unmatched by any of this album’s louder moments. Smith’s voice and delivery become reminiscent of Dan Bejar as he hops across the line of “no no, no, no, no” that peppers itself throughout the first verse; tense, gorgeous cymbals crash in the back of the mix and hint at a cathartic explosion that never gets realized. Instead, the album’s most potent moment takes a quieter, more affecting shape, a refrain that begins as an affirmation and grows into a powerful mantra: “As we lay here to rot,” Smith and Urich sing, their voices inseparable, “it’s not over yet.”
Fade Out is available now via Fundog Records.
