Anxiety Dogs – Dick Valentine (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

It would be easy to wax lyrical about Dick Valentine‘s past exploits, his parallel careers, and his singular and sensational back-catalog output across many different fields. I could…I won’t…why not? Because Anxiety Dogs doesn’t need such name-dropping, it sells itself. Simple as that.

As “Where’s the Love” kicks things off, you quickly realize that things feel familiar yet different. Sure, there is a sort of New Wave pop-rock feel to the song, but something is not quite right, and that not-quite-right-ness is exactly what makes the music so great… this opening salvo, in particular, sounds like The Cars having a nervous breakdown as they ascend the charts.

“The Winter Wants To Know” rises from a pop-folk vibe through angsty acoustica and arrives at scuzzy garage rock guitars, “Sweet Seneca Pie” struts like Lou Reed and soars like Elvis Costello, somehow simultaneously cocky and frenetic, and “(I Keep) Folding is reminiscent of something that The Who might have written for one of their operatic rock outings.

It is an album that blends wisdom and wit, the relatable and surreal, and sucks the humor from the marrow bone of life’s difficulties. Valentine plows furrows and turns over stones to find the necessary sonic chops to perfectly frame life’s rich and often ridiculous pageant, taking in relationships, meaning, identity, love, loss, and longing as he goes.

And if both the words and the music often seem fun and quirky, and they are, listen again with a retuned ear, and you will find an album of songs that may not have many answers, but it will remind us that we all have to put up with the same crap as we go through life. You are not alone!