Dog Is Blue ::: photo by Karol Orzechowski

I was first intrigued by Dog Is Blue when I saw them described as “garage folk.” My brain engaged in such Olympic-level mental gymnastics trying to puzzle out what this entailed that I decided to stage an investigation, and downloaded the band’s newly-released sophomore album, Tortoise. What seemed like a contradiction in terms turned out to be pretty apt: the Toronto duo’s strength lies in taking the musical and vocal stylings of folk and stripping them of their earnestness, replacing it with garage rock’s breezy slackerdom and a well-honed sense of fun.

“I, I like doing nothing,” vocalist Paul Watson confesses in “People.” “Nothing is all I really like to do.” Crooned slowly over a vaguely surfy guitar, it’s a sunnier heir to slacker anthem “Loser,” Beck on island time. In “Slow Boat to China,” Watson and bandmate Laura Heaney similarly sing the praises of the slow life: “It’ll take a while but we’ll get there… What do you need to go any faster for?” It’s no wonder, really, that the album is called Tortoise.

For all the examples of thematic consistency, however, Tortoise often feels like a sketchbook of an album, a collection of ideas not fully sorted or congealed. At times it veers dangerously close to the preciousness it generally does such a delightful job of avoiding: “Stan & Georgie” may attempt to come off as world-weary, but the refrain of “We can’t replace the ones we lose” rings only as overly sentimental. Similarly, it’s difficult to tell if “She Said” is meant to be emotionally brutal or bittersweetly romantic; consequently, it succeeds at neither.

Far more successful is the blithely uncomplicated “Laura’s Song.” “I like to read,” she sings over a simple banjo accompaniment. “I like to bake. I like to run, I like the lake. And I like to la, la, la, lalalala.” It continues in its airy fashion for a minute and forty-two seconds, when it ends abruptly with a banjo mistake and a laugh. On Tortoise, Dog Is Blue hone in on their perfect tone, often splashing in the waters nearby. But when they hit, it’s deadly. “Laura’s Song” is a precision strike. She laughs, and you’re sunk.
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Tortoise is available through iTunes, Zunior.com, and Bandcamp.
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