Dr. Dog
Fate
(Park The Van)

How do you top the Beach Boys/Beatles/The Band amalgam put into action across Dr. Dog’s 2007’s We All Belong? Call it Fate. While Philadelphia’s Dr. Dog has always had the influence of the three “big Bs” in the mix, they’ve been ever twisting it up in their own lovably shaggy way. Elements in their songcraft hinted at the great past, but here was a definitely unique band perhaps destined to make their own history. Fate is a clear signal that Dr. Dog is coming to realize their greatness. Fate is a sort of concept album—but not in that Roger Dean artwork, gatefold-cover way—as it finds the Dog digging into the nature of fate and how it can connect everything. The band is not only playing at their finest to date here but also growing into the grand scope of their songs. While you still don’t have to look far for nods to “Hey Jude” or “Wah Wah” or a harmony nicked out of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” Dr. Dog are anything but stylistic vampires. With carefully constructed songs of stacked melodies, harmonies, and immaculately played parts, and the ability to turn it all around on a dime, there is no other band that sounds remotely like this. Dr. Dog finds and affirms their own unique identity over these 11 tracks. While the lead vocal and lyrical duties shared by bassist Toby Leaman and guitarist Scott McMicksen threaten to put the pair at the front of the picture, it’s impossible not to hear that this is a rare and real case of a whole and complete unit working together: No one part is more important than the other. There’s no way to overrate Zach Miller’s swirling keys at the heart of every song. Likewise, Sukey Jumps’ note-perfect guitar parts and Juston Stens’ bouncy beats which fuel it all. The joyful, gospel-dipped “Hang On” and the album’s two-in-one closer “My Friends” are almost as perfect as songs can get. Somehow, Dr. Dog packs everything into them—harmonies, boundless instrumentation and arrangement—without every sounding dense or polluted. Instead, they always maintain the band’s trademark breeziness and warmth. The Gillian Welch-esque “100 Years” finds Leaman’s narrator vigorously pining to get out from behind the plow. Like Welch’s work, the songs on Fate have a wonderful vagueness regarding time. Leaman and McMicksen sound like they could be singing about things that happened yesterday or centuries ago, a feeling bolstered by the band’s seemingly effortless embrace of their playing’s timeless quality. This was the album they were bound to make and it is almost perfect. Again, call it Fate.

—donny kutzbach