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The moment the needle drops on Bite, the new A Giant Dog record, one’s conception of what an A Giant Dog record sounds like bends like space and time around a starship running at lightspeed.
The biggest point of departure is that Bite is a concept album, concerning characters who find themselves moving in and out of a virtual reality called Avalonia. You’re thrown into it quickly, as a calm, robotic voice says, “Welcome to Avalonia, happiness awaits inside” over a crushing synth line that segues into an opulent string arrangement.
A Giant Dog’s first album of original songs since 2017’s Toy, Bite finds the band — Sabrina Ellis, Andrew Cashen, Danny Blanchard, Graham Low, Andy Bauer — at their peak as musicians, challenging themselves with more complex arrangements and subject matter that forced them out of their heads and into those of the characters who occupy this supposed paradise.
“Within our previous albums, the subject matter, the lyrics are all very personal, based on our experiences—self-centered, even,” Ellis explains. “In making this conceptual album, we had to find ourselves within, or project ourselves into, the principal characters. We developed them, got to know their minds, emotions, and motivations, and then expressed those in nine songs. The songs aren’t demonstrative as in musical theater. Instead, the songs are heated moments, internal expressions that stand on their own.”
Phantogram. Big Freedia. George Clinton. For most folks, opening for any one of ’em would be the crowning achievement of their career. But to have shared the stage with all three, not to mention Bob Moses, Lettuce drummer/producer Adam Deitch, and other legends in under a decade? On Trouble in the Streets‘ list of milestones, those high-profile performances barely scrape the surface.
Since the mid-2010s, this Austin trio has produced societal dissonance that’s both accessible and danceable for the masses. By paving the spaces between hip-hop, R&B, pop, rock, psych, and beyond, the ferocious group’s self-described “electro tribe” sound helped them garner Austin Chronicle‘s “Best New Band” award in 2018 and third-place runner-up for “Best Electronic Act” the following year. Among acclaimed sets at SXSW, UtopiaFest, and Joshua Tree, a recent feature from frontwoman Nnedi Agbaroji with Jim Eno’s Project Traction, and one the most snicker-inducing band abbreviations imaginable, TitS is pretty much…well…
But right now the big news from these seasoned Studio 1A veterans is their upcoming LP, out next year. The record introduces Kenny Schwartz replacing co-founding percussionist Bobby Snakes, who still slithered onto the album’s lead single as a send-off. Entitled “Dreaming of Forever”, this four-minute safari of sounds (whose menagerie includes crunchy bass synth, vehement vocal harmonies, and a truly brilliant bridge section) is an enduring reminder of TitS’ idiosyncratic dynamics and an enticing glimpse of what’s to come.