Fan or not, no one is confusing Philadelphia’s indie-folk outfit as an adventurous band. They saddled into their sound early on with their “Takers and Leavers” EP, a 5-song collection of dusty little indie pop gems that’d serve as the sonic template for their breakout LP, “We All Belong”—and each album after.
This is not a criticism; Dr. Dog is a comfort food band. Fans aren’t necessarily looking for them to break off in some bold new direction, adding a vocal percussionist to the roster or trying their hand at calypso. With each new release, they know more or less what they’re in for and they keep coming back for more.
“B-Room” isn’t much different. We get a straight blues-rock song in “Minding the Usher,” in sound and content. “Too Weak to Ramble” is an unusually stripped ballad, their barest since “Die, Die, Die.” “Cuckoo” sounds like a Blue Oyster Cult cover band gone off the reservation, in the best possible way; and “Rock & Roll,” is an appropriately sloppy tribute to the genre and its intoxicating effects on the young, summed up perfectly in its refrain: “It freaked me out.”
But otherwise, the album is boilerplate Dr. Dog. As always, Toby Leaman and Scott McMicken trade off mic and pen duties, crafting lilting pop melodies (“Love,” “The Truth”) and vague lyrical adages (“The truth don’t stop”) with equal competence. “Distant Light” may just be the Platonic form of a Dr. Dog song, featuring both of the aforementioned trademarks and the bouncing major chords of a piano featured in so many of their songs.
It’s by no means a bad song; just really familiar. So it goes for most of “B-Room,” 12 songs that fans will gladly belt out at the next —dependably not all that different from the last.
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Dylan Owens is Reverb’s indie and bluegrass blogger. You can read more from him in Relix magazine and the comment sections of WORLDSTARHIPHOP.
