Giant Dog - Toy - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Forging their friendships in the crucible of their Houston, TX, high school, Sabrina Ellis (vocals), Andrew Cashen (vocals, guitar), -and Orville Neeley (drums) first got their start covering AC/DC, The Ramones, Joan Jett, and the finer points of the Back to the Future soundtrack at school dances under the band name Youth In Asia. Reuniting in Austin in 2008, they enlisted their pals Andy Bauer (guitar) and Graham Low (bass) and christened the act A Giant Dog. AGD is raucous ear candy culled from the hook-driven melodies of Slade, the glammy swagger of Marc Bolan, the morbid fantasy of Killer-era Alice Cooper, and the unpredictable wit of Sparks. Sabrina and Andrew's lyrics, equal parts brutally honest, clever, and debased, have a knack for taking their idiosyncratic depravities and making them feel universal. These songs are by, for, and about the losers, freaks, and outcasts. The lonely. The terminally horny. Boozehounds and party animals. No band better speaks to the hearts of slackers, burnouts, rockers, sluts, and creeps everywhere than A Giant Dog. AGD have built their reputation blowing the goddamned doors off every venue in Austin. Live, they are loud, heavy, electrifying. Sabrina struts around the stage like Iggy Pop channeling Tina Turner. Andrew hurls himself from the summit of the speaker stack. Graham's headbanging clobbers anything close to him. The audience rages, asses shake, and everyone leaves drenched in beer and bodily fluids. Over the years, they've clocked in their time on the road, leaving destruction in their wake. They've shared members with other bands in the Austin rock 'n' roll community including Sweet Spirit, OBN IIIs, Bobby Jealousy, and others. In 2012, AGD impressed fellow Austinite and Spoon frontman Britt Daniel enough that he took them under his wing to start demolishing concert halls across the USA as the support act for his band.

Courant Zero builds an immersive electronic environment from shifting textures, understated rhythms, and cinematic atmosphere.

Bite is a concept album, concerning characters who find themselves moving in and out of a virtual reality called Avalonia. A Giant Dog's first album of original songs since 2017's Toy, Bite finds the band-Sabrina Ellis, Andrew Cashen, Danny Blanchard, Graham Low, and Andy Bauer-at their peak as musicians, challenging themselves with more complex arrangements and subject matter that forced them out of their heads and into those of the characters who occupy this supposed paradise. Themes of addiction, gender fluidity, living ethically in a capitalist society, physical autonomy, avarice, grief, and consent bubble beneath the promised happiness of Avalonia. The songs on Bite are full of bombast, at turns calling to mind the spacefaring operatic rock of Electric Light Orchestra and the high drama of an Ennio Morricone film score.