Considering My Morning Jacket concert ticket prices start at about 100 bones for scaffold seats and the brightness of their pretentious light shows are on par with that of Lasik surgery, it is easy to forget you're at a concert and not a test site for nuclear weapons. However, in 2004 a scraggly band called Dr. Dog tagged along on the MMJ tour, and though largely unheard of, captured the hearts of shaggy haired indie kids instantaneously.
Shortly after the summertime tour, the band released Easy Beat in the spring of 2005: a masterpiece of neo-Beatles, lo-fi garage rock with an incredibly diverse tandem of vocalists—the coy and spongy Toby Leaman, and the stanch, starving-artist Scott McMicken.
Yet there's something inexplicably comfortable about the Philadelphian sextet that makes their music so enjoyable—kind of like the feeling you get when you get free doughnuts or something. Their new LP We All Belong follows Easy Beat in the same vein, but at the same time promptly answers fan's calls for more.
The album begins with a flowery, piano-driven ""la-la"" track in ""Old News"" that acts as a throw back to the early '90s when Ben Folds was still folding Five. ""My Old Ways"" is certainly more bubble-gum than previous Dr. Dog tracks, including a crescendo that, if ears could squint, sounds like a less-hokey version of ""Singing in the Rain."" Dr. Dog pulls this glittery big rig over with ""Keep a Friend,"" a well-placed pit stop for We All Belong with McMicken's Doo-Wop croons—naturally creating the ideal ""crying in your beer"" tune. ""Alaska"" will make you swear that Joe Cocker is still writing music, with a flawless balance of Hammond B3, southern-style guitar licks and chilling bluesy yelps.
While the tender bongo rolls of ""Weekend"" slip an umbrella in your poolside cocktail, the caustic horns of ""Worst Trip"" emulate the fat guy doing a cannon ball right as you are dozing off. ""The Way the Lazy Do"" makes song writing seem so easy with an absolutely gorgeous composition from start to finish.
The murky dirge ""Die Die Die"" raises the bar for sad-bastard ballad opening lines: ""It turns out cigarettes can kill you / So when you didn't come back / Every time that I thought of you / I smoked a whole pack.""
Then enters the pinnacle of the album in ""Ain't It Strange,"" which generously tips a cap to the song ""Hey Jude"" using a very similar musical progression of the famed Beatles tune—including a sweet piano roll and a ""bum-bum"" outro that sounds eerily comparable to the affable ""Mr. Sandman"" (for lack of better ""bum-bum"" reference).
We All Belong is sheer bliss impressed onto sound waves that tickle the left side of your brain to the point where you feel like you could hack it in the music industry and start a band of your own. Who knows, maybe your band can be the opening act for My Morning Jacket under the name Nurse Cat or something along those lines. Maybe not... but bring a pair of sunglasses just in case.
