Seemingly exploding out of nowhere at the end of 2017, white-hot local garage quartet the Spoon Dogs have elbowed their way to the front of the local trash-rock pack on the strength of hyper-kinetic live workouts, playing with the likes of fellow rock true-believers Golden Pelicans, Scott Yoder and the David Nance Group. And fittingly for their fast-forward musical arc, the quartet of Dan Delanois (guitar), Sam Crow (guitar/vocals), Sam Leatherwood (bass) and Christian Viguie (drums) this week celebrate the release of their debut 7-inch single with a show at Stardust and "saving their nickels and dimes" for an East Coast tour up to New York and back in a few months.
From humble beginnings a couple of years ago, when the members of the band – all more or less freshly moved to Orlando – would meet up at Delanois' house, "get wired on coffee and start screaming," the band quickly banged together a live set and started hitting local stages hard, impressing straight out of the gate. Orlando Weekly witnessed a few of these early sets and we can attest to being surprised by the controlled ferocity of such a new outfit.
Funnily enough, Spoon Dogs cemented themselves as local favorites when they played a shockingly note-perfect Devo cover set – in full Devo drag – around Halloween last year in front of a packed house at "Ugly Orange Presents: Battle of the Cover Bands." The members collectively laugh in happy disbelief at winning the championship belt for the evening, but lament that "the belt is falling apart, it needs to be hot-glued."
But it's with their original material that the Spoon Dogs really prove their mettle. New single "The Way You Talk About It," an incredibly convincing distorted strut clocking in just under three minutes, is newly out on Pasadena's Pig Baby Records, an ace repository for garage rock wildlings like Bloodshot Bill, Deadbolt and Stephen El Rey. (And in an oddly fortuitous twist, Pig Baby is also putting out the Woolly Bushmen's In Shambles LP, discussed on the previous page.) Produced by Simon Palombi of the Bushmen (!) and recorded in a handful of takes, "The Way You Talk About It" is as much a rave-up as it is a taut statement of intent. The Spoon Dogs aren't going to be a local secret much longer.
