Poor Old Dogs are a Bristolian Blues country rock sort of a band whose new album 'A Fresh Pot Of Mustard' opens with the slightly stoned mandolin rock of Dog's Day Off: a bit of a knees up of a song.
Tonight, however, sounds like it wants to be a full-on, massive building song of the stagger home when you leave the pub at closing time on a Friday night variety. We've all been there. It descends into the staggering and diversions of that journey and all the odd things that may or may not happen, a good raucous song that reminds me of Thee Orphans quite a bit.
King Of Rome is quite a tale and well worth hearing a few times to make sure you have the whole story. It's all bar room country folk, like an English Pogues almost. Industrious Little Nippers is not only a great song title but also a nice laid back folk song with lots of Birdsong in the background. It concerns things that happen in the park and the allotments.
Jack Hall is one in a long line of country-folk songs that repeats the line "my name is..." and then tells the story of its hero. Jack Hall is worth adding to the list even if it isn't as sad as Pennie Evans. The fact Jack gets hung at Tyburn Hill certainly makes it nice and dark and it does sound similar to some of Rev Hammer's songs on a similar topic.
A Love Often Forgotten is just a nice simple love song, more or less, and is pretty cool. Reprise is a less than two minute dub interlude with a nice jazzy feel to it. That gives way to the reggae-rock of Staying In Bed as you are too lethargic to get up and do something cool like go to a festival.
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Betty sounds like a folk love song of lust and drunken desire and it's a bit of a hoedown. Fishmonger is no Fisherman's Blues but almost a call and response tribute to Tommy who's a fishmonger. It comes with added seagull noises in the background every now and then. As it speeds up it could almost be a kid's song on a cartoon. Whiskey Johnny, meanwhile, is a very traditional sounding sailors drinking song.
Designated Weirdo signals yet another shift with the voices seemingly revolving in our heads as the song starts to build and go off in several directions. It could be 4 songs mixed as one almost. The album then closes with Immoral in Balmoral which it has to be said is a great song title and the chorus about loving curly hair is pretty cool even if the song is slightly mad in a good way.
This is a pretty good, if slightly disjointed, album that suggests that Poor Old Dogs would probably be a lot of fun to see live.
Find out more at Cantabank Music artists page
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