Feature: Cogwheel Dogs
As a musician myself, I tend to view music criticism as basically a pissing contest. Who can dismiss the most hard-working band the most flippantly? Who can come up with the most esoteric (yet the most appropriate) music with which to compare a new release? Who can craft the most absurdly elaborate metaphor to describe the experience of listening to music? As I’ve mentioned before, this pissing contest is what seems to be driving the independent music industry more than the music itself, meaning a lot of truly fascinating bands are slipping away under the radar.I am here to say: no more.
I’ve been an active proponent of Cogwheel Dogs since I first heard their single “Cress” in the winter of last year – concise bursts of primitive beauty being beaten and thrashed out of acoustic guitars and cellos, the spare arrangements of singer/guitarist Rebecca Mosley’s idiosyncratic songs only highlighting their brilliance. I could compare Cogwheel Dogs to figures like PJ Harvey, but that would be too easy, and anyway I like Cogwheel Dogs much, much more than PJ Harvey. Her voice bears some similarity to Harvey’s, but the music itself is much more subtle than that, recalling at the same time the dark chamber pop flashes of John Cale’s Velvet Underground and other symphonically-bent contemporaries like Final Fantasy or St. Vincent.
The real thrill of Cogwheel Dogs’ music, though, is how purely visceral it is. The songs are terse and the playing is eruptive – the sounds of Mosley’s voice and Tom Parnell’s cello thrusting and slashing across each other, fighting for the little breathing room the songs allow. The delivery is furious in its intensity, and the multisectional songs cover vast amounts of ground in very short spaces. Whomever you compare Cogwheel Dogs too, I can say with confidence that there is not a band around who sounds quiet like them; and hell, even if there was, there aren’t many songwriters active today who can match the singularity of this band. Currently criminally under-recognized, Cogwheel Dogs are poised to explode, and few bands around would be as deserving as they.
The band have already released a single, “Cress,” available for free download on their website (listed below), and are preparing to release a new EP, “Greenhorn,” on September 7th, 2009. Y’all can count on a full review from me when that happens.
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