Cassette Review: The Pooches "One Man Dog" (Gold Mold Records)

[£3 // Edition of 75 // https://goldmoldrecords.bandcamp.com/album/one-man-dog]

To explain the musical style of The Pooches is not easy to do in 2015 because not many bands sound like this anymore.   There is a clean pop rock quality to the sound which combines the overall aspects of The Mr. T Experience and the movie "That Thing You Do!".     Further into it, upon listening more and more, you'll find elements of The Beatles, The Turtles, Beach Boys and just overall a happy go lucky sound that doesn't seem to bring you down.  Sometimes it can border surf and garage, but it's a lot of dreamy goodness.   There is an instrumental number also.

The lyrics on here cover a variety of topics.   "Michael" is a song about how much he likes his friend name Michael, who is from Texas but lives in Louisiana.    He also gives shout outs to Audrey and Oliver on different songs.   A song titled "Captain Lou" should require no explanation.   "Barcelona" could be some kind of theme song to try and attract tourism.   And then they also have a song about Jonah Hill, which is funny bcause it's just kind of about his career and how they admire him.   Though I do enjoy this line: "People roasted him and made fun of his weight / But when he was fat I thought he was great"   If you watch the movie "Funny People", Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill kind of touch on this at one point as Rogen had lost a lot of weight but Hill hadn't yet.    It is true though- these actors are funnier when they're fat.

With ten songs per side this feels like a double album because each side just has so much to offer.   Though, if you look back into the past it was a more common practice for bands to release albums with twenty songs on them.   And this music does have that throwback to the 1950's and 1960's where it is just wholesome.   It reminds me a lot of what rock n roll was thought to be before it got turned into what it is now (or by the 1970's)   That Buddy Holly feel, sure, but also the Big Bopper and all those guys who hung out with Johnny Cash and just couldn't seem to offend anyone with their music.

I also do think of this as a bit of twee, but it just remains in this forgotten genre that people aren't really drawing from anymore.    I expect the music to either get faster, so I can relate it to punk somehow.   Or I expect it to get distorted so it could be something else as well.   Maybe they'll drop an f-bomb and ruin my image of them.   But, no, they keep it up the entire time and I just can't really compare it with too many modern bands- if any at all- and just that positive vibe it sends out seems to make this impossible not to like.