Band on the Run: Dr. Dog

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ULTIMATELY, DR. DOG just wants to be left alone.

Preferably, in a studio.

The band's own studio.

But when your band travels constantly, that kind of solitude can be difficult.

"This tour has been pretty strenuous," said organist Zach Miller in advance of the band's Nov. 7 appearance at the Rock & Roll Hotel. "We've been doing a lot of drives and we haven't really been getting a lot of time off and stuff like that."

The past few years have been kind to the Philadelphia five-piece, which first rose to prominence with 2005's critically acclaimed "Easy Beat" and followed that up with this year's excellent "We All Belong" (both for the Park the Van label).

Dr. Dog's sound is a strange amalgam of '60s Beatles pop, '70s classic rock and Beach Boys-style vocal harmonies. All that, played through an off-kilter filter. Put it in a blender. Set to puree.

But with great albums, comes great responsibility ... to tour. A lot.

Dr. Dog has shared the stage with the likes of The Black Keys, Cold War Kids and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah on recent excursions. Supporting tours like that are supposed to open up interesting opportunities for bands on the rise, and that's exactly what it did for Dr. Dog.

When onetime tourmates Architecture in Helsinki offered the opportunity to cover "Heart It Races," a song from the Australian group's new album, Dr. Dog accepted.

"They were working on that concept for that album even before it was released," Miller said. "They asked us to do it and I guess they asked other people to do it, too.

"I don't know if [our inclusion] meant the other covers never surfaced or what," he added jokingly.

The funny thing is, even Dr. Dog's cover nearly didn't surface.

"We had to go on tour again and we were like, 'Oh, man, we've gotta do this cover!'" Miller recalled. "We sort of slapped it together in a few days, which for us is a really short time.

"It was cool because the atmosphere was a lot lighter. Some people would come in and throw down some parts, then some other people would come in. It's a lot less labored over than one of our songs. Not that we didn't take it as seriously, though, because it came out great."

All of Dr. Dog's five studio releases to date have been recorded by the band, most recently in an industrial-era Philadelphia building that houses, among other things, an architecture firm.

"It's a bit of a weird vibe there," Miller said. "There'll be, y'know, people walking around in khakis and a polo shirt, and then we're in there with our guitar amps and stuff."

But the band's professional surroundings don't seem to be hampering Dr. Dog's style. Things are as loose as ever on "We All Belong," which takes the straight-up psychedelic vibe of "Easy Beat" and expands even more — to the extent that the band needed 16 extra tracks on its recording deck to capture it.

"We did the first record on eight-track reel-to-reel, and this one on 24-track," Miller explained. "We were in a new studio with new equipment ... so pretty much all the songs on there were recorded with a different method to it. There wasn't one real focus. We sort of had to figure out each little bit of it as we went along."

And therein lies the beauty of self-recording: The freedom to play.

The band buys old used tapes from another Philadelphia studio and uses the unpaid-for mid-'90s hip-hop songs that remain on them as sample sources. (This is where the drums and handclaps for the "Heart It Races" cover came from.) On any given night, Dr. Dog could be agonizing over a mixing decision until 4:30 a.m. if need be.

There are also plans for these recording rats to combine studio forces with Alec Unsworth from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah in a space just outside of Philly.

"We all come from the background of recording ourselves and the discovery that comes with experimentation," Miller said. "There would be just a whole different mentality if we were in a studio on the clock. Having our own place just felt like the natural way to go."

» Stream the album "We All Belong" in its entirety here.

Written by Express contributor Alex Abnos
Images courtesy Park the Van