A shrink-wrapped copy of Concentration sits on the
table in the kitchen rented by Nancy Urich and Seth Smith, one half of
Dog Day, the record’s author. Its release is in a few days and not all
of the band, all of whom are here, have seen it. Urich banters with
Smith, her husband, about the whereabouts of “the open one,” the copy
they’ve already checked out. He gave it to someone. Urich gestures to
the fresh CD on the table.
“Can I have it so I can show my mother?” she asks Smith. He replies
in the affirmative, rations out the beer and leaves the room with
drummer KC Spidle.
A docked iPod set to random is the soundtrack for the next two
hours. The first song is “Let It Be.” Keyboardist Crystal Thili reveals
that she just found a vinyl version of The White Album for a
dollar. The theme of Tim and Eric: Awesome Show! Great Job! comes in, ironically canned, and Urich stops herself mid-sentence to
announce, “We are blessed with Tim and Eric’s presence! Sports!” The
Davids—Cross and Sedaris—are skipped for drowning out the room’s
conversation—though “Nance does a pretty good David Sedaris,” Smith
will report—and twice Dog Day songs are quickly passed by. “That
can’t happen,” Spidle will say.
Urich, the bassist, and Thili take seats at the table. Thili unwraps
the CD. The artwork was created by Smith, a noted illustrator and half
of Yo Rodeo!. He’s done all of Dog Day’s graphics, from Thank
You‘s diamond ring pop to Night Group‘s antique frame to
this new Aztec-tinged darkness, brightened with tiny rainbow drops and
diamonds.
“He wrote most of the songs so I guess it kinda comes from that,”
says Urich, “sort of dark, yet colourful.”
(For Smith inspiration rose from a combination of a childhood trip
to Mexico and his love of drawing patterns: “It’s pretty addictive.
It’s a way to ease your nervous tics, to do something. It’s my
cigarettes.”)
The quartet’s second album, Night Group, took longer to
release than the band would’ve liked—they recorded across six months
after-hours at Common Ground Studios with Andrew Watt (“We were
partying a lot, to be honest,” says Urich. “We’d get there after work,
we might do a part of one song, but mostly we were just hanging out”),
then had to wait for their German label, Tomlab, to settle on a mixer,
which took another season.
For Concentration, they engineered the record themselves at
home and in their north end rehearsal space, with the mixer picked out
ahead of time. And since it was John Agnello (you might remember him
from albums such as Dinosaur Jr.’s Where You Been?, The Hold
Steady’s Boys and Girls in America or Sonic Youth’s Rather
Ripped), and Agnello only had two free weeks, Dog Day was given an
official deadline for its third LP.
“He was really stoked right away. That was obviously a bonus,” says
Urich. “When you call him and he’s done all these records that you’ve
loved and he likes what you’re sending him. He was like, ‘And the time
frame would be this’ and it was perfect for us.”
“We just had to make sure instead of dicking around we got it done,”
adds Thili.
Urich and Smith departed for Hoboken, NJ, in October of last year
for two weeks at Water Music Recording, on the heels of a-ha (yes, the
“Take on Me” people. “We drank a-ha’s whiskey,” reports Urich). They
were put up at the studio’s loft.
“You could fit my entire apartment in the living room. It had a
kitchen and two bedrooms and four double beds. A whole band could go
there and live. And there were dogs there; we could’ve taken Woofy,”
says Urich of the pair’s dog, currently staring in from behind a closed
glass door. “We were trying to think, ‘Should we concentrate on the
record, or should we take Woofy? Should Woofy have a good time in New
York, or should we do our job?'”
“I find it hard being a backseat mixer and having some guy turning
knobs and your voice is doing crazy things, and it’s up or down and
reverb’s happening,” says Smith later, picking out some gourmet
jellybeans from a depleted glass jar and washing them down with lemon
water in a measuring cup. “I kind of grit my teeth. But with this guy,
I don’t know, that didn’t happen. I trusted what he was doing.”
Concentration feels like a natural yet notable progression in
the Dog Day sound, pulling it away from the early-’90s tag of previous
efforts and into a new sonic space that lightens up the music without
removing any of its emotional heft. (Urich and Spidle independently
refer to the record’s sound as “dreamy” and “wet.”) There’s
considerably more keyboard work—“It might be a natural evolution,
considering I don’t really actually know how to play keyboards,” says
Thili, who handles bass duties in The Hold. “As I’m doing more and
more, things get easier to add in.”
Urich’s vocal contributions, while always present, appear on almost
every song, taking the lead on “Neighbour.”
“She requested to sing that one,” says Smith. “I said, ‘Actually I
think that would work better. Because the lyrics I wrote were really
creepy, about my schizophrenic neighbour, and I think it’ll sound
better coming from you.’ How did you put it, a low-singing ghoul?” he
asks Spidle, then sings in a low, Nick Caveian voice, “I walk the
streets behiiind you.” He laughs. “I’m not as worried about Nance
walking the streets behind me.”
Though some songs date back to the Night Group era in 2007,
the bulk of them came together during the band’s extensive tours
through Canada and overseas for the past year-and-a-half. Smith and
Spidle split writing duties.
“You get influenced on the road, just touring and seeing other
bands, being other places,” says Smith.
“Just being insane,” adds Spidle. “You’re more insane on tour,
because you’re never in a bed that’s your own, you’re never in a place
that’s your home so you just play shows every night and you wanna be
creative but sometimes you’re just not.”
“You lose motivation staying in the same environment for a long
time,” says Smith. “You get a fresh perspective outside.”
“The thing with touring is there’s a lot of waiting time, you know?
There’s only that 45 minutes a night you’re actually busy,” says
Spidle. “All the other time you’re trying to find things to do—you’re
either writing dirty hip-hop on the road, or finding things to do like
making skits in hotel rooms or writing riffs before shows.
“You’re always dying to do something creative. You’re sitting in a
van all the time.” (Dog Day has much more sitting in a van on the books
for this year—the band heads across Canada on May 8, not to return
until mid-June.)
Concentration touches on themes familiar to veteran Dog Day
listeners—titles include “Don’t Worry About the Future,” “Youth of
Destruction” and “Wait it Out”—but the band refuses to expound on
what it all means, which is almost sweetly ironic, considering how much
Dog Day means to this city.
“I don’t like it when a song has a specific meaning and that’s what
it’s about, and if you don’t like it then it doesn’t apply to you,”
says Smith.
“People interpret things in all sorts of different ways,” says
Spidle, “and that’s when you know you did what you were supposed to
do.”
Dog Day Concentration release w/The
Memories Attack and The Got to Get Got, Friday, May 1 at Reflections,
5184 Sackville, 9pm, $10.
This article appears in Apr 30 – May 6, 2009.
