Every year that Britain is disgraced at Eurovision (i.e. most of them), a weary strain of music fan insists that if we just entered a real band, glory could be ours. This year, the theory was almost put to the test. South London band Fat Dog claim that they discussed representing the U.K. but pulled out because of Israel’s continued participation. (The BBC refused to comment when I checked.) If not for that admirably principled stance, you could see it. Their ripe seam of klezmer, spitting punk, booming ’80s synth-pop, raging dark disco, and one kerrrrrazy frontman is just the stuff of Eurovision—a sort of arable Nitzer Ebb that’s impressive for two minutes when accompanied by eyebrow-singeing pyro.
Two minutes would be one thing. Fat Dog are now onto a second album of their idiocracy agit-rave. Stripping back the klezmer that was apparently their U.S.P., and the between-song monologues of 2024 debut WOOF., their surprisingly slick music sounds like the past 30 years in post-Prodigy NME hype bands—Kasabian (cosmic swagger), Hard-Fi (everyman bolshiness), Reverend and the Makers (stomping ego), the former Slaves (lairy lads)—and is just as abrasively tedious. It might open the mind of a sweet summer child—it would be remiss not to mention that “Go Fuck Urself” peaked at No. 67 on the Estonian airplay charts—but even kids would cringe at the band’s showy taste for swearing and flagrant mentions of coke, dicks, and wanking, generally barked as if through a tinny megaphone.
No score yet, be the first to add.
The new album is called Cancel Me (I’m Tired), which would be quite funny if a) the Fisher-Price Fat White Family were actually transgressive, or b) said anything about the grind of modern life that makes the idea of social harakiri so darkly relatable. Frontman Joe Love has indicated the lyrics on WOOF. were a bit of an afterthought, but this time he had more to say. He can just about have “Call It What You Want,” which grinds and wheezes and wails about a relatably grubby kind of despair: “You wear the world right under your skin/So we all bang keys/Till we all get thin.” But elsewhere they toss off lowest common denominator riffs on Walt Disney (“Put me on defrost”), Jack Nicholson (“Chase me around the house”), and OG Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? host Chris Tarrant (Yep, “phone a friend”). You could imagine a gakked-up mate validating these surreal evocations of the cultural detritus of modern life or some shit, but these impotent references aren’t strong enough to scaffold a single tweet, let alone a point of view.
