Takers and Leavers - Dr. Dog
Release type, label: EP, Rough Trade
Release Date: October 2 2006
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The Strokes have a lot to answer for.

The 2001 releases of their Is This It album, along with the White Stripes’ White Blood Cells spawned a surge of retro acts, and many a band even strove to imitate the imitators themselves. We were landed with groups riding on the coat-tails of others: the laboured regression that was Audioslave, the childish musical and literal posturing of The Darkness, the impressively flat sound of the Raveonettes.

But, out from the mire, we enjoyed some genuine musical advances. The Strokes live on. The synth-heavy Killers produced more complex, layered music than their forebears. Dr. Dog, as the set of stars above has already told you, now joins the best of these bands. Their strength lies in the loving loyalty that they bring to their retrospection. The character of these songs is light and celebratory, with songs like stand-out ‘Goner’ approaching the quality of the finely balanced harmonies and piano-led ballads that the Beatles and Beach Boys brought to music in the '60s.

As with the White Stripes, but with a much more strictly retro sound, the lo-fi recording places vocals at the centre of the mix in a refreshingly simple way, a genuine treat in today's Coldplay- and Radiohead-led sad song climate. They improve on their predecessors not with anachronistic, trendy lyrics or heavy bass, but with gentle and moving, even Floydesque guitarwork. The past can try to be the future, and sometimes it may even succeed.