Interview: Puppy
At the dawn of a 2018, trio Puppy release their debut album ‘Goat’ and toured the UK throughout April. Elements of metal and pop combine in this band’s classic rock vs indie sound. Think Weezer meets Ghost with elements of At The Drive In, Iron Maiden and Muse thrown in. Paula Frost called up frontman Jock for a chat as the band zipped through Europe in their tour van.
The line crackled as I connected with Jock and the band, who are driving from Denmark to Hamburg on their European tour. The band had been travelling for six days and played three shows. “It’s our day off. We’re a bit dishevelled. Nothing exciting is planned for when we reach Hamburg. Actually there’s a karaoke bar there we went to last time so we might head back there.” I asked for his karaoke song of choice: “I did ‘Freak on a Leash’ last time. I might do that again. It wasn’t a heavy metal night so it was pretty strange. But I enjoyed it!”
Puppy have been building their sound for over four years. They formed from the ashes of singer/ bassist Jock and drummer Billy’s old band Polterghost. Guitarist Will joined shortly after, completing the line-up. The debut album ‘Goat’ sounds mature for a debut and Jock said: “Yeah I think that’s because we’re quite old now! We’ve known each other since we were 12, we went to school together. We’ve been in tons of bands since we were kids. Will was in a doom/ stoner band for a long time. There’s a kind of indie rock element in our band. When Will joined he took what Billy and I were interested in doing and pushed it a bit more into his style. I think Will wanted to be in something that had a bit more melody and chord changes. When we came together we were able to create what we separately wanted to achieve.”
Influences-wise, the London based group have been compared to Deftones and consider themselves to be indie metal. They’re into Dinosaur Jr, Swervedriver and Hum. “I’m a big At The Drive In fan too but I don’t know if we’re consciously influenced by them. I really like the guitar playing on that stuff and their approach.” He continued: “Weezer’s ‘The Blue Album’ is a big pillar of what we do. I love the way they’re influenced by classic rock and metal but put it through their own filter.”
In April Puppy will be taking on their first headline UK tour playing Southampton’s Joiners and Camden Underworld as well as venues in Leeds, Manchester and Glasgow. It’s taken the band four years to build up their fan base to this level. “We’re always quite nervous that no one will come! As long as people turn up its really cool. Headlining means you’re not trying to win people over as much. London Underworld will be our biggest headline show so it will be a nice one.” The band tour pretty consistently: “We went on tour with Grove Street Family last year and that was great, we’re big fans of them.”
Puppy have become known for their DIY or die approach applied to every element of the band. They create their own cover artwork, merch designs and direct and shoot their own music videos. “I think with any band it’s one of those things that’s born out of necessity really. No one else is gunna do it for you and you can’t afford to pay anyone else to do it. But then we’re lucky as well that Billy and Will are able to come up with really great video ideas. It’s something that we enjoy doing and we’re able to be in control of how we’re visually represented.”
Last year the band made a viral video which got over 300,000 views. It was a comedy mash up of England winning the World Cup through the eyes of Matrix characters Neo, Trinity and Morpheus. Bizarre and hilarious it ends with Morpheus’s classic line: “He’s starting to believe.” As Three Lions (Football's Coming Home) plays.
Puppy have put out seven music videos, five of which are all supporting singles from their new album ‘Goat’. Their ever-strange ideas blend comedy with occult creepiness and rack up tens of thousands of views. In the video for ‘Demons’ the band join a cult and talk about how their new found religion ‘The Grand Order’ has changed their life. Two months ago they also released the video for their single ‘World Stands Still’ following a day in the life of a werewolf kid as he cycles around town spraying graffiti. Jock explained how they did the werewolf makeup: “That was a friend of ours called Tabatha. She’s a really talented makeup artist and she worked with us on the ‘Black Hole’ video too. There’s a creepy goat guy following us around and she did the makeup for him as well. We came up with the idea to have a kid with all this gnarly makeup and she was really into it.” Think American Werewolf in London meets Wayne’s World. “Yeah that definitely works. Uruk Hai from Lord Of The Rings was a huge influence as well.” He added: “It’s nice to have that as part of the band as well. It’s another creative outlet, especially for the other guys.”
For their latest video ‘Bathe In Blood’, the band have put comedy aside and made a terrifying occult film where three robed figures roam around a forest holding hands as if having séances. “That wasn’t us in the robes. We actually managed to get actors in. That was a fun one. We shot that in Clearwell Caves and the forests around Gloucestershire. I actually think some weird pagan stuff goes down there.”
When it comes to the music, one thing that sets Puppy’s songs apart from other bands currently on the scene is their attention to detail and backing vocals harmonies: “We’re big fans of Teenage Fanclub and The Byrds, The Beach Boys, The Beatles and Crosby Stills and Nash. So having big harmonies and backing vocals is a big part of what we like. A big part of doing that as well was doing something we could create live. There’s only three of us so we don’t have any extra guitars or keyboards. Being able to have depth to our live sound means having harmonies. We just like the sound of it. From the first song we put out we’ve always been like that. I guess you tend to pick up those little tricks along the way that you can pull out. It softens our sound as well, having really hard metal with those kind of harmonies gives it a nice approach and lightens it up in a cool way.”
The band’s song structures are developed and detailed whilst their lyrics are introverted and open to interpretation. Jock spoke about their writing process: “I kind of write by myself and talk to the guys, they modify their parts a bit and then things happen. But I tend to work by myself really. Then we string it all together. That’s one of the things that’s pretty simple. I don’t think I’m very good at jamming on songs, I wish we were!”
When it comes to lyrics, Jock’s work is off the cuff: “I’m one of those crap lyricists that waits until the 11th hour. We’re about to record and I’m like: “Oh shit I need lyrics.” Having said that, there’s stuff I’m really proud of but once the music’s done I’m not really worried about the lyrics. I know something will happen and I have rhyme zone saved on a tab on my laptop so I can usually come up with something.”
The recording process for the album was lengthy and Puppy used changed producers midway through. Jock explained: “It took ages actually, we did it with two different producers and we started recording in June 2017. We were unable to finish the session. We recorded with Tom Dalgety who’s recorded Royal Blood and Ghost. We did guitar tracking with him for the album and then because of his scheduling we couldn’t really finish it. So we ended up finishing it with a guy called Neil Kennedy. He had a studio in Southampton called The Garage. We went and did it and he really brought it all together. We had different parts recorded in different studios and so it was important to draw it all together which he did really well. He smoothed it over and we were super happy with it. We got a guy called Adrian Wabucoshby to mix it as well. He’s done loads of incredible stuff too, worked with Devo and done loads of classic rock albums. Between the three of them we finished it. It took a while but we got there in the end.
Jock chose his stand out track on the album: ‘Poor Me’, it’s not out yet but when it was all put together I was happiest with it because the chorus pops the way it should and it just sounds great. But across the board we’re really proud of it. It’s funny, we hadn’t listened to it in a long time just because we’d been working on it for so long we had to step away from it. When you’re too close to something you can’t see it for what it is. But we picked up a vinyl the other day from our label and we looked through the track listings and realised we’d forgotten some of the tracks we’d put on it. When we looked back on it all we thought: “Actually this is fucking sick.” We’re really, really happy with it.”
With a big year ahead, we finished our conversation by speaking about the year ahead. “I’m really looking forward to that headline tour. It’s gunna be wicked and we’re bringing some really cool bands with us.” Jocks most looking forward to their Camden show. “Playing The Underworld, for us that’s a really big deal. We’ve played there a few times before with other people but this is our first headliner in our home town, it’s really big for us.”
