Within the last week or so a new Radiohead album came out. The ubiquitous, reviews, reactions and think-pieces made me want to kill myself, but that’s just what Thom Yorke and those jerks in Radiohead would want me to do.
So instead, I listened to Pile by Austin’s A Giant Dog and found it to be an enjoyable slice of old-fashioned, ass-kicking, self-aware and slightly campy rock music. The band’s third release for Merge Records is just a really solid, fun album–basically the opposite of a Radiohead release.
Pile is basically every redeeming quality of FM Rock Radio jammed onto one disc. It’s bombastic, there’s guitar shredding, folksier contemplative songs and the phrase “Rock’n’Roll” can be belted out with abandon in the choruses of multiple songs.
There’s also a cheeky sense of humor to the proceedings, which could be distracting in an Eagles of Death Metal way if executed poorly, but when listening to the album, it becomes pretty clear the band has lots and lots of love for the rock radio they draw their sound from. Plus, the jokes are generally self-effacing or skewering a certain dirtball lifestyle that I get the impression A Giant Dog are more than a bit familiar with.
It also helps that Sabrina Ellis, who splits vocal duties with guitarist Andrew Cashen, has an amazingly charismatic set of pipes. Really, you couldn’t ask for a bandleader who sounds like their having more fun, and it’s infectious as underscored by the video below.
This almost isn’t the greatest album ever made, but Pile is the most unbridled joy I’ve head in a while, and it’s kind of perfect over a car stereo on a summer day.
The Ear Regular 