Dog is Dead

When you think Kasbah you think inebriated people being sick on their own shoes, in the middle of the dance floor. Nice. But occasionally some gem of new music comes to play in ‘the other room’. Cue Dog Is Dead. A 5 piece of ‘choral pop, that’s a bit wonky,’ (as bass player Trev sums up.) Last year they supported Bombay Bicycle Club, this year they are going places. Go listen to their single Hands Down and the B-side, it’s better.

Dog is Dead are in Kasbah’s interpretation of a dressing room before they’re due on stage to play a club night.

Trev: Right what are the stage dares for tonight?

Joss: You have to do the Napoleon dynamite dance. No wait don’t do that, then we’d have to cut an entire song from the set’

**Is there a pressure to stay different, have a unique sound?**

Rob M: I think that there are only a handful of guitar bands that are doing alright at the moment. If they were all copying each other, I think that would die quite quickly. But with whatever is going on with whatever trend at the time I think it’s important to keep doing your own thing. But it’s not something we play on.

**Video for Hands Down, what’s the concept?**

Rob M: We wanted the entire song to be sung on rollercoasters, but that would have had to be a guerilla videoshoot, which couldn’t be done. So it’s just guys breaking into their work place and having a good time. And chilling in a theme park.

Rob W: I think we were just trying to get across the feel good atmosphere of the song… through our own enjoyment. Ha!

**Album is planned for 2012, how’s it going?**

Rob M: The materials there, we’re going into the studio in a few weeks to put a few more songs down. But I’m doing it bit by bit, around touring, keeping it really quite casual, and just trying to make the debut record we’re been writing half of for 3 years, half of for 3 months. Piecing that together is going to be the hardest part, but it’s set for spring.

**Do you think your tracks sound different live to on the EP?**

Rob M: Live it’s a bit more of a rock show, depending where it is but I think at festivals people just want to have a good time. It constantly progresses as the whole live set progresses. I always see the live set as a body of work.

_Rob tries to answer the question seriously, with a straight face. Harvey stops the chat to narrate for the tape._

Harvey: Just for the tape Rob from Dog is Dead just put a sombrero on for the duration of the interview.

Rob M: This is the Mexican look.

**What’s your favourite song?**

Joss: I really like this new one called Two Devils we’re going to play it tonight.

Harvey: I wouldn’t say I have a favourite, you have to believe in everything you do. You don’t want to think, ‘well we’ve got a couple of good songs and a load of crap songs.’

**Do you write collaboratively?**

Rob W: Rob writes the basses and the lyrics and then he brings it to the table and we add to it…

Joss: Make it good.

Rob W: Er make it better.

Rob M: I’ve got this notepad and I looked through it the other day and every page has like one line on it, someone said to me ‘why don’t you just use the same page?’ It’s because I kind of hope I’ll write more for that song I but only have like one lyric for each song. I’ve got all this stuff on the dictaphone on my phone where it’s just like the worse kind of humming and guitar sounds that sound hilarious when you play it back but to me right then its real and you’re like yeah this is going to make history!

_Dog is Dead get distracted and start talking about other bands. Several minutes later._

Harvey: Guys ! We’re talking about Draco Malfoy again, this always happens.

**Have you got any good free stuff on tour so far?**

Joss: We were in Fopp in Nottingham and we got the best free stuff ever. Usually you just get things like clothes, but they let us have a couple albums for free and it was like YES! But I still managed to spend like 30 quid on albums.

Rob W: We went to Milan to do a show for Burberry in Vogue Fashion Week and they gave us things to wear and we still looked so underdressed.

**That’s pretty cool.**

Harvey: Yeah but I wore my Burberry shirt at the signing in Nottingham… got permanent marker on it. Great.

**How did you move from just playing in Nottingham, to being picked up by a record company?**

Rob M: I think there’s that horrible stage in between where you have those first London shows and the first thought after your home towns is always going to be London, and that’s really hard, we made several trips where you go there and back in a night, and we’d play to like 5 people then to 10. You know doubling audiences every time but starting out with like no one there. That’s really difficult and quite soul destroying but now you come back now and you’re playing to like 300 people and its a lot more obvious the step up. It makes it a whole lot easier once you’re getting descend crowds and people are starting to care outside of Nottingham, and then I guess that’s when its record label time…

**Carpe diem?**

Trev: Means rock the fuck out.

Harvey: That’s the literal translation.

Dog Is Dead are playing O2 Academy Birmingham on 20th February.