Office Dog: Spiel (Flying Nun/digital outlets)

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Office Dog: Spiel (Flying Nun/digital outlets)

This Auckland-based trio had its origins in Dunedin, so them finding at home on Flying Nun seems appropriate.

And in places on this 12-song debut they certainly cleave to the guitar pop of the Nun's earlier bands, albeit better produced (by De Stevens at Roundhead over a couple of long days).

The downbeat repetition of once-familiar bands is evident (Antidote) as is the widescreen density of Eighties and Nineties indie-rock in other places (Gleam).

Office Dog are singer/guitarist Kane Strang, drummer Mitchell Innes (Violet Hirst) and bassist Rassani Tolovaa.

All had prior form together in Strang-lead bands.

Much of this is familiar post-Pixies indie-rock which manages to be both melodically poppish but also dense (Big Air with clever dynamics which allow it to breath) and where Office Dog create their point of difference -- or slight departure from norms -- is in slower material like Warmer, the tension-release of the jangling Tightropes and the indie-pop ballad In The Red which reaches for the heroic.

On ambitious songs like Hand in Hand they shift through magnetising rhythmic and melodic shifts with a wee hint of folk, picked up by the finger-picking intro on the drone-folk of the Cobain-influenced Cut the Ribbon which follows.

With Spiel, Office Dog have done more than enough to reenforce their status within student radio and the indie scene.

But what's more important perhaps is that throughout there are confident songs and risks taken which suggest better to come and the possibility they could extend their established base.

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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here


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