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AMERICAN DOG: Mean (Colonial Canine)
By Fizz
Rating: 8.5
What better way to ring in the new year than with the latest release from American Dog? That’s right: on the eve of a new decade, our beer-goggled Buckeye heroes have returned! Whose turn is it to buy the next case of cheap booze?
Mean is the band’s fifth full-length studio album, and isn’t so much a progression, as past
releases might have been considered, but a refinement of the band’s sound. Not that American Dog’s raunchy rumble could ever be called refined, and nor would they want it to be. Mean is more a honing of their craft, and a summary of almost everything they’ve done up to this point.
The thing that strikes me the most about this CD, after a month of listening, is how comfortable and familiar it feels, like your favorite old pair of sweat pants. You know what you’re getting into when you slap in an American Dog disc. I guess that brings up the whole finding-their-niche vs. stuck-in-a-rut conundrum, but I prefer to see the beer-stein as half full and frosty-cold. And so we get a little something from each of the band’s previous releases, all worked into these eleven new tunes: the heaviness of 2007’s Hard, the bluesiness of 2005’s Scars-N-Bars, and some of the more—ahem—“immature” lyrical themes of their first two albums. The song structures here are immediately simpler, mostly twelve-bar blues arrangements without an overabundance of lyrics. But you still get the always-tight rhythms of bassist Michael Hannon and drummer Keith Pickens, and the ever-present guitar heroics of Steve Theado. Hannon’s vocals are the usual snarling and snapping, but perhaps more than ever, he’s worked in some melodic parts that actually work.
Now maybe I’ve made Mean sound like a boring, by-the-numbers release. And maybe if you don’t like the band anyway, you’ll see it that way. But if you’re a fan, or you like their brand of turbo-charged, alcohol-fueled “redneck metal,” you’ll be well-satisfied.
Although Mean incorporates flavors from each of the band’s previous records, I would say it’s closest cousin would be its immediate predecessor, Hard. In fact, prior to writing this, I went back and re-read my review of Hard, and found that I had already said some of the same things I had been planning to say here. The songs have that same muscular, stripped-down feel, complemented by their best production yet (particularly the terrific drum sound). There are more guitar jams, possibly because the lyrics are fairly sparse, but they don’t drag on interminably like sometimes in the past.
“Just One More” gets the pub-crawl off to a thumping start, as Hannon reads out of his Little Black Book about his stable of women far and wide, stopping only for Theado to unleash a particularly blazing solo. And with that, we’re on our way, down a well-stomped path to all the local haunts. Along the way, Theado discovers the wah-wah and manages to use it in a tasty and tasteful way throughout. Notice the way he makes his guitar yowl like a horny feline in “Cat Has Got You By The Tongue Again.” We get some headbangers, like “Boozehound” and the nasty slide of “AIn’t Dead Yet,” and some shuffly bloozers, like “Drivin’ Down The Sidewalk” and “Gonna Stop Drinkin’ Tomorrow.” Theado breaks out a countrified acoustic on the latter, and Hannon actually sings tunefully. Then there are some heavier, more methodical tracks like “Mine All Mine” and the lurching title track, probably the slowest these guys have every played, but again, they strike gold. There’s even a swampy little summertime, backyard-party jam in “Sunshine/Moonshine,” which might be the biggest surprise here.
After Hard’s experiment with less direct lyrics, the boys are back to celebrating their three favorite topics: booze, women (both of the cheap variety), and pride, roughly in that order. Saving the requisite nod to punky Motorhead speed for last, they even take on the high-minded task of stripping the word “motherfucker” of its negative connotations, in the song of the same name. As an added treat, as the final burst of feedback fades out, the guys offer up a final treat, in the form of a hilariously profane, finger-popping doo-woppy little sing-along that you’ll have lodged in your brain for the rest of the week.
And lest you think it’s just a bunch of lowest-common-denominator buffoonery, American Dog want you to know that they have a lofty premise for this album. It’s a concept album, as the liner notes explain. Yep, just like Thin Lizzy’s Jailbreak was supposed to tell some far-fetched apocalyptic story but really didn’t, Mean deals with a landscape ravaged by a nuclear accident, and three hardy survivors mutated into a hideous creature with an appetite only for strong drink. Or maybe not. Maybe it IS just a bunch of tunes about drinking and fucking.
Oh yeah, and there’s one cover tune as well. The Dogified version of “This Ain’t The Summer Of Love,” Blue Oyster Cult’s sneering eulogy to the hippie era, appeared as the title track on last fall’s limited-edition EP, along with a couple other covers and rarities, and “Mean.” It gets squeezed onto the disc here, and is a fine song and good, beefed-up rendition, but I would just as soon have heard another new song or two instead.
All in all, Mean delivers exactly what American Dog fans want, steaming hot and right to your door, in forty minutes or less. It all goes down smooth and easy, and is absorbed quickly into the bloodstream. In a music world where the only innovation seems to be in avalanche-inducing, pet-terrorizing extreme metal, it’s goddamn refreshing to have American Dog around to just rock out and escape for a while. Even if you’re only going to your favorite dive bar to drink PBR and play a bunch of Ted Nugent and Molly Hatchet on the jukebox.
Go score it at the band’s website. For an extra five bucks, you can get a signed poster, a sticker and a pretty cool dogtag, at least I did.
Best Songs: “Just One More,” “Mean,” “Ain’t Dead Yet”
Worst Song: “This Ain’t The Summer Of Love”
