With a reputation for causing chaos both onstage and off, South London's Fat Dog are gearing up to whip 2024 into a frenzy.

Words: Neive McCarthy.
Photos: David Richardson.

"The behind-the-scenes of cheese is fucking brutal. I've seen someone break their entire foot because they dropped the cheese on it. They're like 40 kilos, some of them, the big wheels of Comté, or a big cheddar. Parmesan can weigh like 50 kilos!" 

The perils faced by a cheesemonger are not to be taken lightly, as Fat Dog's resident keyboard and synth player Chris Hughes makes clear. It's not an occupation for the weak, and neither, as it happens, is being a member of Fat Dog. When frontman Joe Love joins the call, it becomes apparent that the explosive last year in the world of Fat Dog has been full of unexpected twists and turns, and seemingly falls. 

"Was it this tour, Joe, that you completely decked it?" Chris asks. "That was a life highlight, you jumping back on stage and slipping in your own sweat. That's some You've Been Framed bullshit. Where's the £150 for that?" "250!" Joe chips in. "We'll have to call Harry Hill for that." 

Anyone who has managed to catch a Fat Dog show over the last couple of years will perhaps not be surprised at that kind of incident taking place mid-show. Building a reputation upon raucous proceedings long before they even released their first single, the band's live performances are nothing short of a fever dream. Joe has a penchant for throwing himself into the thick of the crowd, drummer Johnny dons a latex dog mask, and there are impressive mid-set dance routines – if you can imagine it, it probably exists in a Fat Dog set in some capacity. 

The result is a performance that's difficult to look away from, and that high-voltage approach has encouraged a spirited conversation around the band. Through support slots with the likes of Sports Team and Viagra Boys to sweat-soaked festival sets, they've carved a name for themselves purely based on that commanding stage presence. In the midst of their very first headline tour, they've brought that kinetic mayhem to a new level.

"It's been surprisingly good," Chris muses. "When you're on a support tour, you're playing to way more people, and some of them might know you, but most of them don't. I've been surprised with the headlines how many people in the crowds have come just to see us, and people are singing the lyrics to songs we haven't released. That's pretty cool." 

Some have genuinely gone barking mad over Fat Dog, a select few more so than others if you consider the woman who kindly gifted Joe a boiled egg. "It's a burgeoning romance," Chris smiles. "It's very intense," counters Joe. They're a band revelling in avoiding convention, so it makes sense that they'd inspire that kind of reaction. 

One such example of their unique approach lies in their choice to make the mammoth, seven-minute chameleon-like 'King of the Slugs' as their first-ever single earlier in 2023. It's a sprawling effort, a song constantly shifting until its close is unrecognisable from the way it began. A striking, bold decision, but one that has no doubt paid off.

"I thought it was a bad idea, to be fair," Joe recalls, with Chris confirming that they were in agreement on that front. "I'm glad we did it now; we got the hardest one out of the way."

Chris continues: "The thing about 'King of the Slugs' is it's a seven-minute song, so that's why we thought it was a bad idea releasing that as a single. It's just fucking long, and I think some people might think it's almost an arrogant move. I think it worked out quite nicely, though; it's one of the songs that sums us up quite well. It's very danceable songs that aren't necessarily about anything important." 

It's a very specific blend that stems from their myriad influences and tendency to dip between genres with little care for how naturally they might come together. It begins with a riff that practically snarls, tension rising immediately before Joe's scorching vocals even come in. The fraught mood doesn't last long, however – release is quickly found as the track descends into a swirling, cathartically klezmer-esque cacophony. 

It's a statement above all else – of who Fat Dog are, of what they're capable of, of how far they are willing to push things away from their expectations. It's darkly cinematic at times, and at others, it chooses rave-fit beats that encompass you completely. If there were ever a track to epitomise Fat Dog, 'King of the Slugs' is it. 

With such an array of influences, it's impossible to pigeonhole Fat Dog, but many are wont to do so regardless – they found themselves labelled as post-punk, specifically in the country of France, but the musical world of Fat Dog extends far beyond that. 

"I kind of do feel like it's redundant," Chris says. "I think people just for their own little brains like to catalogue things…" "Don't say your little brain," Joe jumps in. "That's so condescending." 

"Your tiny little mind!" grins Chris. "Yeah, people like to categorise things. Everyone wants to have some sort of genre to put music under to explain it to their friends, but outside of that, I think it's pointless. Listen to the tune; if you enjoy it, you enjoy it. If you don't, you don't."

Thankfully, it seems a lot of people are enjoying it. It was a seemingly impossible task taking the track from its original two-minute version, which Joe assures "sounded like arse", to something resembling the sprawling sonic bedlam of its live counterpart. Eventually, however, they managed to capture the essence of that. 

"It was long, not to moan or anything," Joe laughs. "When we first got in the studio, I thought it'd be a few days, bish bash bosh. We'll just make it sound like it does live. Then we listened back to it, and we were like, 'Fucking hell, that is awful. Is that how we sound?' It's completely different because live is about energy and loudness and visuals."  

As is perhaps the nature of the ever-changing, ever-shifting band, that recorded version has, in turn, prompted even more change.

"We've improved the klezmer bit based on the recorded version, so we've mixed it up again so that the live version is slightly more like the recorded version," Chris explains. "I'm like a sweet summer child, though. I joined way after all that graft. I just press the buttons – they had a hat of instruments and just let me pick one."

Claiming to play the viola (but actually sounding "like the worst piece of shit I've ever heard in my life," according to Joe) was Chris's way in, a move that sums up the ethos of the band quite well. "You've just got to be tenacious! It's confidence over competence. That's all that really matters in music."

Luckily, Fat Dog do have a bit of both, or they might have had a considerably quieter year. It's looking set to be an even busier 2024, with promises of even more pandemonium to come and their debut album looming ever closer. There's just the small task of getting that done yet. 

"I'm the only one that goes into the studio," Joe says. "These men are so annoying in the studio. It's too many cooks in the kitchen. They're always like, 'Can we get some more crunch on that?' What does that even mean?" Chris concludes: "It's like we're ordering really shit drinks from Starbucks for Joe to make." 

Fortunately, it won't be all slaving over caramel macchiatos and no play – with gigs taking them to caves in the Arctic Circle on Joe's birthday and a whole host of new music to unleash on the world, Fat Dog are set to send even more people barking mad for them in 2024. At this point, it's just what they do – that's Fat Dog, baby. 

Taken from the December 2023 / January 2024 issue of Dork.