When the New Zealand singer-songwriter Kane Strang got tired of going it alone as a solo artist, he started an old-fashioned indie rock power trio called Office Dog. Backing him up are two friends from different iterations of his touring band: bassist Rassani Tolovaa and drummer Mitchell Innes. Like Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh, and Built to Spill, this threesome emphasizes the personality of each player as it wrings maximum drama from a minimum of instruments. Tolovaa interjects unexpectedly melodic counterparts, Innes drags the songs in odd directions, and Strang favors low, dissonant guitar notes that often sound like an animal scurrying through underbrush. Rather than abrupt or violent, their quiet-loud dynamics are measured, even eloquent, such that Spiel, their debut, sounds like an album about the joy of playing together.
Recorded in Auckland with producer De Stevens (best known from the Dunedin band Marlin’s Dreaming), Spiel wanders some of the same terrain Strang has mapped in his solo work. Too young to have experienced the initial wave of New Zealand indie pop firsthand, he always sounded a little more self-consciously clever, a little less enamored with earworms than the other Flying Nun bands to which he was constantly compared. (Spiel was released on that label last year before getting an international release via New West this year.) But he’s still interested in the way a grinding, slightly dissonant guitar can kick up some dust and how a monotone delivery can make even slightly melodic passages sound almost ecstatic by contrast.
With Office Dog, however, Strang is more than willing to cede control to his bandmates. Spiel is heavy but nimble, more direct in its arrangements and sentiments, but also moodier, more melancholy; it sounds like shoulders shrugged against a cold wind. While he does craft some intriguingly askew hooks—slicing the word “shade” into multiple syllables, clipping his words into a staccato rhythm on “Tightropes”—Strang pares his songwriting back considerably, deploying just a few words to gesture toward feelings that resist specific labels. Just as the music toggles between quiet and loud, these songs move from alienation to contentment, from unease to “something like an antidote.” That tight interplay between the three musicians sounds so disarmingly poignant because at heart this album is about recognizing and savoring even the smallest moments of joy.
It’s odd, then, to hear Strang close out the album with an apology. “Sorry for the spiel,” he sings as the trio’s dense rumble fades and some tentative guitar licks emerge. “I just wanna feel real.” It’s a meta moment that might have sounded too clever for what precedes it—like a wink at the notion of the indie rock album as a therapy session. But what comes through isn’t self-absorption but something much closer to gratitude. These are songs that catalog small moments and simple pleasures, like a friend’s smile that “feels like heaven to me” or the warmth of “sunshine on your face.” Or maybe it’s just the modest pleasure of bass, drums, and guitar each clicking into place.
