
One former U.S. president told reporters that it was precisely at the moment he moved into the White House that he realized that if he wanted to make any new, real friends in this capacity, he’d better get a dog.
Now, the majority of us reading this text have not been presidents of a nation. But I’m confident we understand the sense of disenchantment and disappointment well. Why do we even experience listening to a new pop record or going online, things that used to thrill us? Everyone’s desperate to sell something fast, and nobody has the time to ask us what we need.
In many ways, the swampy psychedelic blues that Spyderhuff employs on “Everybody Needs a Dog” is a soundtrack for the times. It’s music for a world that could certainly be worse; it couldn’t be any more boring and inauthentic. Yeah, if you need a friend, you better get a dog.
The EP opens with “Come Take the Bones,” a song that could just as well be about the End of Days, an event for which the singer seems almost giddy. The song opens with a muddy slide guitar before opening up and revealing an interior made up of elements borrowed from classic rock and early 70s psychedelia.
And, indeed, if there’s a common denominator to the songs on this EP, it’s the willingness to play deliberately and slowly here. It’s not exactly jam-rock material, but Spyderhuff isn’t rushing in and out of pop song hooks, either.
There are more lead guitar heroics on “Drag and Drop,” a song about our increasing overreliance on big tech to keep us informed and entertained. The anguished singing here does a good job of capturing the feeling of absolute burnout with social media culture.
Meanwhile, “Future” features a jazzy rhythm section and vocal phrasing that resembles the rambling of a television game show host. There’s humour to this, sure, but the vision is bleak. The future resembles the darker moments of our collective past, and that can’t make you smile.
Finally, what’s left? Just doom and gloom? That, sure. But loyalty and love, too. On the title track, a blues ballad, the songwriter comes out heart in hand and looking for a safe, new home.
There are plenty of reasons to sing the blues. It’s always been this way, and maybe the worse is that things don’t look like they’re going to get better. For all that bitterness and some of the hope remaining as well, Spyderhuff delivers a soundtrack.
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