Album Review: Run Dog — “The Big Room EP”

Joel Sires slides into my DMs: “You need to listen to this band. Run Dog from CF. Unreal. So fully realized. High praise from someone I consider one of Eastern Iowa’s great songwriters.

I wasted no time discovering the quartet, who released their first four-song EP The big room in February. They garnered their share of chatter following impressive performances at the Octopus in Cedar Falls.

Playing this EP for the first time, I remember the experience I had in October 2009, in a barn in Green Island, Iowa, where the then-unknown Dawes on the first Daytrotter Barnstormer tour , played a stunning set for a small crowd, each of whom looked at each other with incredulous eyes.

Although Run Dog is considered a new band, it is made up of old friends who grew up cutting their musical teeth in Waverly, Iowa. It features Addison Payne on guitars, keys and lead vocals; Sam Ackman on guitars, keyboards and harmonies; Matthew Bancroft Smithe on bass and mandolin and Derek Raatz on drums and percussion. After time apart, they found themselves close enough to play together again.

“The big room The EP was sort of born out of the need to have something to work on and make a selection of recordings that we could show people,” Payne said in an email, “but I’d like to think that he does more than that. I always like music that allows you to hear artists in full discovery… For this project, we avoided our back catalog of unreleased songs in favor of what was freshest, and I feel like that gave us surprises at music time. growth.”

It was hard to resist the temptation to link this album. Payne’s voice is a fine, soulful tenor reminiscent of Gary Louris of the Jayhawks or John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats, and the instrumentation doesn’t fall far from either of those two bands – leaning toward a sound more acoustic with a little organ and electric guitars to add color. The common thread of the songwriting moves towards a first-person narrative centered on the disorder of the human condition.

The EP kicks off with “Mistake,” which sets the tone and mood of the album with delicious, timeless mandolin playing from Bancroft, who also wrote the song. The lilting chorus “It’s not a mistake, I feel that way” hangs in the air and in your head long after the song ends.

The second track, “Hour And A Half,” is my favorite and the one I identify with the most. It perfectly captures the feelings around a relationship that could be greater and having the courage to run towards that possibility.

The engine is running on the street ahead
Do you believe me when I tell you what I want?
We can waste another weekend playing guessing games
Or I can shine the headlights in the autumn rain

The EP closes with “I See It Done” and “The Big Room,” which are both wistful, impressionistic, and nostalgic portraits of adolescence.

It is said that music can trigger the brain’s limbic system, which processes emotions and memory. The goosebumps that people often describe are thought to be the result of dopamine released when listening to a particularly emotional piece of music. In my opinion, The big room illuminates my limbic system. I’m happy to be here to see the debut of another great band wide-eyed WTF.

This article originally appeared in the June 2024 issue of Little Village.