As soon as I heard the latest single from Portland genre-blurring punks The Taxpayers, I immediately began to imagine what would have happened if PUP has been nurtured within the Elephant 6 Collective. “At War With the Dogcatchers” is a burnished pop miracle, opening with the sound of a modem connecting before orienting itself somewhere between the works of Neutral Milk Hotel and Fishboy. Horns, strings, curious musical ephemera, and flashes of spiky guitars assemble around the heart-on-sleeve vocals of frontman Rob Taxpayer. Every new angle reveals a dozen different kaleidoscopic details, each one connected in a series of loosely woven musical tapestries and finely inked landscapes. This song is the goddamn Louvre.
Explaining the genesis of the song, frontman Rob Taxpayer reveals: “When a person dies and their pets are left behind, first responders will often take the pet to animal control until they can figure out what to do with it.
That’s what happened when a friend of mine died a few years ago. His dog was taken to the pound with a muzzle on and thrown into a cage next to a bunch of other scared and confused animals. Naturally, when anyone got near her she would growl and bark. So animal control decided she was dangerous and needed to be put down, unless someone could come and get her within 24 hours. Talk about pouring salt in the wound.
A friend of the family was able to come get her and care for her until a longer term solution could be found. She got shuffled around a bit before finally finding a new home.
So that’s how we ended up with a dog.
No thanks to the good-for-nothing dogcatcher.
‘At War With the Dogcatchers’ is about that: loving the broken things in spite of the dogcatchers of the world, and trying to find meaning in those things amidst the tragedies.”
Listen below.
Circle Breaker is due out March 21 via Ernest Jenning Record Co. You can pre-order it here. Follow the band on Facebook and Instagram.
