It always sucks when you discover a cool band and then that band immediately breaks up. But on the other side, it's cool when that band then suddenly returns. Maybe they were gone for such a short period that you barely had time to miss them. Maybe they return with a brand-new surprise album. With all that in mind, Dog Date are back.
The New York garage-punk crew Dog Date started in 2015 as frontman Dylan Kennedy's solo project. It grew into a full band with a double-drummer lineup in time for the 2024 album Zinger, which was where I got on board. Last year, though, Kennedy posted the news of the band's breakup on Instagram: "It’s been a lot of fun but sadly it’s time to say goodbye for now." It turns out that Dog Date's reports of their own demise were greatly exaggerated.
Today, with only a cryptic Instagram post as advance warning, Dog Date suddenly showed up on Bandcamp with a new eight-song, 15-minute album called Perfectly. The Bandcamp description says that Dylan Kennedy wrote, recorded, and performed everything himself, so it would appear that Dog Date is back to being a solo project. But the songs themselves are rawkus garage-punk rave-ups that sound like they were recorded by a band of freaked-out wildmen in the same room at the same time. I don't know how you achieve that as a single musician recording entirely by yourself, but that's what Kennedy did. Check out Perfectly below.
The self-released Perfectly is out now.
