Already a firm favourite in the Exposed office, in part thanks to an unhinged cover interview back in September, Fat Dog’s Sheffield show was hotly anticipated around these parts.
Despite the band pulling out of Float Along festival earlier this year, this is my third time catching one of their gigs, having previously seen them live in Paris and London. Continuing my run of capital city Fat Dog shows, tonight we get to see them in (ahem) the Capital of the North, against the not-quite-Paris backdrop of Crookes Social Club.
After a slightly delayed start due to some minor technical difficulties, the stage is set by Fat Dog’s keyboard player Chris Hughes, who launches into a now customary monologue, exclaiming, ‘It’s fucking Fat Dog!’ before the band being building the synth-led intro to Vigilante.
By the time the opener drops its heavy techno beats, the excitement that has been further stoked by the delay has reached rabid levels and is released with an energy I haven’t seen from a Sheffield crowd (on a school night) for some time. Crookes Social Club is a jubilant, chaotic mess.
It’s all very wholesome too. The crowd Fat Dog attract seem to want to lose their shit, but in a polite way where you don’t fear for your nose piercing and can still have a bit of a dance. There’s not a lot of posing (at least not down the front); everyone just seems really fucking happy to be there.
This gratitude is because there’s something special about Fat Dog’s live shows. Absurd, even. Second track of the set, Boomtown, sees Chris part the crowd like the Red Sea, making his way into the middle of the pit, performing his best crab impression (egged on by frontman Joe Love) and leading the audience in a sort of adult game of tiggy bob down!
There’s more of this caper through the night and by the time they’ve rattled through All the Same, debut single King of The Slugs and Wither, I find myself in the middle of it all, sweating through my misjudged jumper with the best of ’em!
They’re a band with a lot of hype and, in my experience, few bands manage to live up to the hype machine, but somehow Fat Dog have nailed it. They’ve successfully created something new-sounding without being too avant-garde, and they don’t appear to take themselves too seriously.
The band seem like they’re having fun. You can’t imagine this group of people doing anything else, really. They’re a ragtag bunch of oddballs in cowboy hats and muskrats, creating daft dance routines to their own tracks. A career in finance was never on the cards for Joe Love and his crew.
Ultimately though, the music is what’s driving all this chaos and, having lived with the album for a month or two, the songs now fit like a pair of well-worn slippers when experienced live.
Their blend of punk and techno beats, mixed with Balkan-influenced riffs, speaks to my soul somehow. It’s this bizarre bazaar melting pot that does it for me, in the same way Turkish punk band LaLaLar’s work really well, or when a band from a little closer to home, Femur, go down this path with tracks like I Don’t Like.
It seems to work for tonight’s audience too, and as Running drops into the set just ahead of the encore, the mosh pit starts, predictably, running around in a huge circle, creating a massive vortex of sweaty bodies.
Following this tornado, after a moment to catch our breaths, the encore consists of a cover of Benny Benassi’s Satisfaction followed by Skibidi (ask your kids) and just like that, we’re heading out into the Crookes night.
After an hour of wholesome moshing, we’re pretty spent and ready to make our way back down the hill to Hillsborough, heart full but much in need of a shower!
