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Vice Blog

NEW YORK - BLANK DOGS IS GOOD


Blank Dogs played with Eat Skull and Psychedelic Horseshit last night. I went to the show mostly just to see Eat Skull. I bought a Desperate Bicycles 7" from their bass player like 10 years ago and figured I owed him. Plus I like their record "Shredders on Fry." It made me glad Scott ditched the Desperate Bicycles for this much more damaged version of pop. But Blank Dogs actually scrubbed my mind clean of any thought I had during Eat Skull’s set, although scrubbed is the wrong word. What they did is closer to the experience early sailors described as they crossed the ocean; after a few weeks without land, the sky and sea begin to switch out mental images of home and family and earth with a succession of shades of blue and green and gray. In the case of Blank Dogs, mostly gray.

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Blank Dogs have existed for three or four years as a series of 7"s and cassettes and occasional LPs, perfectly obscure and wearing an aesthetic that edges towards timeless, or at least unplaceable within the last three decades. The counterpoint to this is a website which provides all of these releases as freely downloadable MP3s. There’s a conversational tone to the site, the release announcements and download links are broken up with photos of masks, descriptions of untranslatable manuscripts, and reviews and songs from old D.I.Y. records. Show posters, however, are entirely absent, and a part of the message board admiration for Blank Dogs has always revolved around their refusal to play live.

But of course everyone likes an event even more than they like some steadfast personal code, and the excitement surrounding their debut created enough of a stir that a couple different events attempted to present themselves as "BLANK DOGS FIRST!! EVER!! SHOW!!"

The four young men that apparently make up Blank Dogs seemed aware of this attention, affected by it, and hopeful that it didn’t really show. In the minutes leading up to their set, they grinned and shrugged at sound difficulties, somehow burst open the sandbag used to secure the previous band’s drumkit, and assembled a completely alien console of electronic equipment that looked like it had been stolen from a classroom. Even the usual gearspotters who interrupted each previous band’s setup time leaning into the stage to discuss petals and keyboard models seemed afraid to come in for a look. I’m sure I don’t even want to know what to call the machines that squalled and stumbled and dissolved into static, and I understood completely why the band sequestered them on the far edge of the stage.

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Each one of their songs started the same way, with a few seconds of drum machine, then two guitars and bass falling in quickly with a grimness I thought music could no longer reach. Bauhaus reunions and Joy Division biopics are no preparation. Anne Rice books and New York Times exposes on goth have ruined any metaphor I could use to describe it. There is something so scary and inviting about their muted, cold-blood tunes. There’s no clang, no edge, just a steady, ever-expanding horror. And then the electronic sounds emerge.

Blank Dogs recordings carefully merge these gurgling, tumbling, broken siren sounds into the song. But live the electronics are all antagonism, an indefinable caged creature at the edge of the stage screeching and kicking at the lock. Whatever scale of unease holds the guitars can’t even reckon the electronics. It’s like a monkey trying to fight fog.

One of the guitar players narrowed his eyes at the gear at the end of the first song and protested, "that thing is fucking loud." In the tangle of metal boxes and obscure shapes it was impossible to guess specifically what he meant, but easy to agree in general. While the band mostly kept their heads down (one of the guitarists sat for the first few songs) the one manipulating the electronics leapt and stomped and threw his arms out, gesturing an anxiety that only sent the rest of them deeper into their concentration.

After the second or third song a girl slumped against the wall with her head down. "There’s a girl sleeping over there" the singer said through the microphone. I think it could’ve been a laugh, or at least curious, but to me it seemed like the band selling itself short. Like they couldn’t see how their songs could weigh upon a person like that. Not in a bad way, just in the way that it pushes you against a wall and insists you keep still for a minute.

ETHAN SWAN
For more information on Blank Dogs, go to this place.