Sometimes, a band demands to be played loud, but it can only be played loud. It’s either loud or turned off. New Zealand’s Office Dog is one of those bands. It proved itself as an outfit to watch with Spiel, its debut LP, earlier this year.
Now it’s back already with the EP Doggerland, a nice companion to the full-length, which guitarist/vocalist Kane Strang said allowed the band to dig into their experimental side and whet appetites before starting work on the sophomore LP. But it’s not just loud guitars, as frontman and chief songwriter Kane Strang has a haunting voice and provides enigmatic lyrics, drawing the listener in for the complete package.
And someone is clearly listening as the band lands stateside for a tour with Nada Surf in October.
We talked to Strang via Zoom from his home in Dunedin about how the band puts its music together. He surprised us by revealing how new the band is to play live, even explaining that the band will play more gigs on the 15-date Nada Surf tour than they’ve played in total—as in ever.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
There’s one truly important question. What is your master plan to make sure the band becomes the key cultural export over Lord of the Rings? You’ve got to take that top spot.
(Laughs) I’m a big Lord of the Rings nerd from back in the day. So, I don’t even know if I want to do that.
We all know the power of ambition.
I don’t know. I have to think about that. We can only try. We can only try.
Office Dog is an unusual name with no obvious meaning. Where’d you guys come up with that?
When I was getting a bit burnt out from my solo music, I was going to start a just almost like a secret little project that was all mine, maybe just me and acoustic guitar. And that was just one of the names that popped into my head. A big part of it is just that I like how that phrase looks on a cover. I think it’s a nice-looking band name, in a way. There’s a part of me that’s always thinking about the visual side of things. I guess at the end of the day, an office dog is something that people bring into an office to sort of entertain themselves and distract themselves from their potentially boring reality at that time. Being a musician is a little bit like being an office dog sometimes, you know. Like with anything I do, I want people to have their own interpretation of it.
Who do you consider your influences, both in songwriting, but also in the overall physical sound of the band, which is very powerful.
That’s always been a funny one for me. Whenever I put stuff out, there’s always a list of bands that that I’m compared to. A lot of the time it is that those old Dunedin sound bands and earlier Flying Nun bands and then, like, sort of the more classic rock kind of ‘90s American bands. But for me, I’ve always really just been mostly influenced by my friends and things, like, very close to me. And maybe they’re influenced by these bands that are out there and successful. But for me, it’s always kind of filtered through them. I do listen to a lot of music and a large variety of music. But especially when I was starting out songwriting, I was just so in my own world. And I just didn’t listen to a lot of music. I know that might sound strange, but I have a very kind of obsessive mind. And I think once I’m doing something, that’s all I focus on. And I’ve really just developed my songwriting through writing my own songs. I did grow up in a musical family. I was always surrounded by music. And, you know, my dad’s a huge Beatles fan. And through them, I found The Kinks and bands like that. But I’d say more than anything, it was just going to gigs in Dunedin when I was 19.
What are your biggest non-musical influences or inspirations?
I recently graduated from university. I went and studied anthropology. I didn’t take a full-on break from music while I did that, but it was just nice to fully focus on something else in a big way, kind of for the first time in my adult life. And a lot of anthropology is really just peeling back the layers, you know. The tagline is ‘making the strange seem normal and the normal seem strange.’ I’ve always been really interested in subcultures and identity formation and things like that. I think in terms of lyrics, those kind of themes often come into it. Or maybe I’m trying to work out who I am through music. Aside from that, I love films. I’ve been watching a lot of movies and a lot of older movies. I like ones that are quite striking visually, and I think when it comes to my lyrics, those are the kind of lyrics I’m trying to write. Words that really bring images to the mind.
Describe the role of rhythm in the band. There are some drum parts, some ways that you count things that don’t particularly resolve easily. Why are there sort of off-kilter rhythms or tense rhythms important to Office Dog? What makes it work?
I don’t know. That just seems to be the way. It’s definitely not that we’re trying to make, like, super angular music or even complicated music. You know, often I think we make stuff that maybe sounds a bit more complicated than it actually is. Do you know what I mean?
I totally agree. At first, the songs seemed hard to count. But then, once I got in the groove of it, I changed my mind. It’s like I had to get over the hump or something.
Exactly. I’ve never been in a three-piece band. With other projects I’ve had, there’d at least be a lead guitarist. And in the studio, especially, I would layer stuff very heavily and have harmonies and lead parts. And I mean, by the time I made my third solo album, there was sax and piano. And so, I think with Office Dog, whether it’s angular or not, I just want every part to feel important. You know, we really think about these songs when we’re writing them. And we’ve thought about every little beat almost, you know, it’s never a case of just bashing through it and being like, yeah, that will do. The big challenge for me is trying to make music where there’s only one of each instrument: bass, drums, guitar. And to have it be interesting for the ears. I think that’s helped me become a better songwriter because I can’t just rely on making a song interesting by continuously adding to it. Something new for me.
Tell me about the songwriting process. You mentioned bringing tunes when you visit the other guys. Do you kind of hammer things out and then bring it to the rhythm section?
Yeah. Usually, I come with the bulk of a song, but it’s a collaborative process. In the past, I would write drum parts and things like that, even though I wasn’t a drummer (laughs). And often drummers would come to me and say ‘what the hell are you doing? Like, this isn’t even humanly possible, what you’ve like programmed or written.’ So, the guys constantly surprise me. And then we reach this point where you just get that feeling where it’s done. That’s what we’re chasing constantly, I guess.
What changes has the band gone through between Spiel and Doggerland?
Doggerland was a really important step to take before we go and work on another LP just because we’re actually quite a young band in the grand scheme of things. When we recorded Spiel, we hadn’t even played a gig. We’d just been jamming in the basement of a church that you could hire out for 20 bucks an hour, for, like, a year. It was kind of during COVID and stuff. So, we couldn’t really play anyway. We kind of formed as that was happening. And so yeah, we’ve only really been gigging like a year and a half, maybe two years. We still have a lot of experimenting to do. There’s still a long way to go when it comes to figuring out what kind of music we want to make. And I mean, in some ways, that’s probably an endless journey.
You’re touring with Nada Surf in October. Tell me a little about that.
We were going to come over to South by Southwest and things like that at the start of the year. Being in New Zealand is definitely a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to international touring. In the end, we decided, like, let’s just wait until there’s something a bit more substantial locked in. And this came along just a couple weeks after we sort of decided not to do that whole thing in March. It’s an amazing opportunity for us. I think we’re going to play more shows in a few weeks than we’ve played total already, to be honest. I’m just excited to see what it does to us as a band. The venues are amazing. There’s no better way to improve as a group than to play live and just to get to do that again and again. And to play at these kinds of amazing, legendary venues, like the Troubadour, and mystical places that you hear about as a young musician. We’re getting to do that.
Doggerland is now available from New West Records.
