Dog Weather [Vinyl]

The story of this record isn’t all that different from a thousand others out here. Songwriter Steven Lambke (also of The Constantines) formed a scrappy band of talented friends (Daniel Romano, Shotgun Jimmie, and David Trenaman and Colleen Collins of Construction & Destruction) when their schedules allow. At the tail end of winter the band heads to a big rural house overlooking a vast body of water. Wood is burned, dogs shit, wind howls. Meals are cooked and people sing, play instruments, and a record gets cut. Serendipity trumps bad luck. What is different on this record is the way its stories are told, what they describe, and the undeniable joy with which they’re played. It is a record full of natural imagery, domestic narratives and ragged characters trying to patch a wound of meaning on the world. This is a rock band shaking its wet fur dry, pulling its boot from the mud and driving another mile to the other side of some fast and reckless youth, to some place a little scarred but settled, holding very little, outside enough love to matter and the knowledge that “There ain’t no road sign at the corner, kid. You just have to know the way.”