Dog Problems CD from the Format: A Wry Cactus Bloom
Peoria, Arizona is not a place one usually turns to when looking for music. A suburb northwest of Phoenix, it literally lies on the edge of the vast desert. Miles and miles of nothingness, silence that rings in your ears after a while.
Phoenix itself has never earned a reputation as much of a hotbed of popular culture, let alone music. Jimmy Eat World is perhaps Phoenix’ best known act, and while Jimmy Eat World’s Jim Adkins often refers to it as a music mecca, scant evidence has trickled out to the nation at large.
Enter the Format, the biggest thing out of Peoria (AZ), centered around the duo of singer Nate Ruess and multi-instrumentalist Sam Means, who describe their own music as “desert pop”. Dog Problems, released in July after it leaked on the internet, is the second album proper from the band (Interventions and Lullabyes appeared on Elektra in 2003); an EP was sold at shows in between.
The Format, whose name is a wry pun on programming formats, released Dog Problems on their own label, the also wryly named The Vanity Label, which is distributed through Sony/BMG. A couple of their tunes have turned up on the MTV show Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County , so the Format seem poised for bigger and better things.
So what does desert pop sound like?
For one thing, it’s full of color. Think of the short-lived desert blooms in spring; strange colors that will never be repeated in quite the same way again.
At their core, most of these songs are fairly bare-bones; some lo-fi acoustic and electric guitars, bass and drums, tuneful synth accompaniment, big choruses and melodic verses in a vaugely Beatles-Beach Boys vein. These upbeat pop songs are then subverted with some more wry wordplay in the lyrics. Arrangements are then gussied up with all kinds of additional instrumentation, subtle sound effects, and given odd, unexpected tempo shifts. All of this makes the music very full and rich sounding; not only are the hooks giant, there’s some sonic meat on the bones.
Besides the hints of Beatles and Beach Beach Boys, Dog Problems recalls on a superficial level XTC’s Skylarking, a classic of baroque pop from 1986. Its lo-fi granduer also recalls the Eels. Lyrically, the concerns are pretty much Nate Ruess’ breakup with a girlfriend. It was clearly her fault; he agonizes and waxes ironic throughout the album. It usually works; “Pick Me Up” finds him hollering in anguish in between the pop hooks, as the music reaches one of its many multi-instrumental crescendos, as if the fate of the world hinges on every word. The opener, “Matches” is a creepy somnambulent tune with a childlike melody and kooky organ that swells up in a bombastic, angelic rush as Reuss’ spits “Do you remember we made love on the floor?!?” It’s certainly silly stuff, and it’s hard to know whether to cringe or laugh, but the irresistably kooky and defiantly melodic music wins me over.
The title track opens with a Flaming Lips style vocal intro and a spare piano interlude before launching into a litany of complaints set to a horn rich arrangement that sounds like a cross between New Orleans, Vaudeville, and a 1960’s strip club band. The closer “If Work Permits” opens with a bluesy acoustic guitar that sounds a little like something Lindsey Buckingham would’ve played long ago, the cornball lyrics are both delivered with an in your face emo and with an intermittant tunefulness, blostered by offbeat harmonies that come from the Flaming Lips’ playbook, with a hint of Nilsson; before the song is over it turns into a rocking, guitar dominated finale, in which plenty of weird noises help drive the whole thing home.
“The Compromise” is the result of acceding to former label Atlantic’s wishes to deliver some radio-friendly fare; it’s the most straightforward thing on the album, and in another universe it would top the charts; it has more hooks than a fishing tackle box, harmonies galore, and a rollicking power pop beat. Even there though, the heavily filtered organ plays what sounds like a guitar solo; nothing is what quite it seems.
Dog Problems is full of these songs; nothing turns out to be what it seems like at first, everything is as silly as it seems, Reuss obvously takes breaking up really seriously, although he’s conscious of his own pathos; it’s part of the attraction.
The only quibble I can offer is that in these wry, ironic 00’s, everything isn’t what it seems anymore. Dog Problems would have been quite a unique little desert bloom in the 1990’s, before bands like Of Montreal, Olivia Tremor Control, and Belle and Sebastian started subverting pop in the service of grand-sounding lo-fi albums. It’s still a fine desert bloom; if you like crackpot melodic pop that you can sing along to (if you’re not embarrassed), Dog Problems will do the trick. But it’s not as unique as it once might’ve been.
Poppier than Flaming Lips, prettier than the Eels, and catchier than Olivia Tremor Control, with enough experimentation to make Brian Wilson proud, Dog Problems establishes the Format as the leading practitioners of desert pop. I won’t argue.
The Verdict: A wry and baroque cactus blooms in the desert.
