How’s your ears today? SPEAK UP, WE CAN’T HEAR YOU YET. Friday night brings a full-on assault on all of the senses with the latest of our Dork’s Night Outs, starring the none-more-buzzy Fat Dog at The 100 Club.
It’s not a night for the faint of heart from the opening math rock onslaught of Cowboyy onwards. The South Coast band have gained a big reputation for their noisy live shows, and this one seems even beefier than normal as frontman Stanley Powell wrestles and wrangles his guitar to death while a storm of unpredictability swirls around him. Moshpits open up, heads are lost, scenes are had.
Butch Kassidy are next up, their heavy sound swarming into the darkness as the lights are turned down. There are no half-measures with this band, ever, and tonight is as oppressive and beguiling as always – just like Cowboyy, they are moving confidently forward from the cultdom that has grown up around them into whatever counts as ‘mainstream’ for a band as mysterious as this.
And then Fat Dog. It’s hard to describe Fat Dog, except for saying that they are an experience to chuck yourself fully into. Still playing chicken with the world in seeing how big they can get without releasing a single note of music, there is pure electricity in the air before they even join the stage as a circle pit opens just to their intro music. Half the crowd are barking or chanting ‘woof’, the other half are trying to work out what the hell is happening as the room descends into a state of feral moshing for the duration.
Even frontman Joe, a man known for enjoying a wander through the crowd, seems to think better of coming too far into a moshpit that seems to have its own gravity – anyone getting too close is immediately sucked into the fray. People are singing every word to songs that haven’t been heard away from a gig, various band members are either up on each other’s shoulders or swinging members of the crowd around their heads – occasionally, they’re all playing music, but it’s hard to tell, really.
It’s all over in what seems like minutes, the band walking off before remembering to say that they have finished. Whatever happens with Fat Dog when they do get around to releasing music, it doesn’t matter a single bit on nights like this.
