When Fat Dog supported Foo Fighters at Berlin’s Olympiastadion this summer, all vocalist Joe Love could think about was the other A-listers who have graced the 75,000-cap venue. He brings up Zinedine Zidane’s infamous 2006 World Cup Final headbutt and Jesse Owens’ legendary 1936 Olympics heroics, then nervously trails off as he pictures where a certain fascist dictator may have stood. “You don’t expect, in your life, to be playing in a stadium built in 1934 in Berlin,” adds synth player Chris Hughes.
Similarly, you don’t imagine Dave Grohl will ever ask your bassist: “How does it feel to be in the f****** greatest band in the world?” “He did say he was going to go for beers with us,” sighs Hughes, who claims he hovered outside Grohl’s green room for three hours. “We got… jilted?” remarks Love, scratching his head for the right word. Instead, coffee with NME will have to suffice, on a muggy summer’s evening in the Brixton garden of a multi-coloured house owned by their label, Domino (Arctic Monkeys, Wet Leg). Love spent his weekend binging The Sopranos inside, while Hughes tended to his sailboat in Sweden.
Nowadays, a weekend with no festival comes once in a blue moon for Fat Dog. Long before they dropped their anarchic, seven-minute debut single ‘King Of The Slugs’ in 2023, the south Londoners’ unpredictable live show had become a word-of-mouth phenomenon. Clubs, pubs and festival tents turned into party-starting battlefields of rave-rock, jazz-punk, klezmer and techno – sometimes all at once. After an appearance on NME’s The Cover, the release of their deranged 2024 debut album ‘Woof.’, many Glastonbury secret sets and last Halloween’s 5,000-capacity ‘Day Of The Dog’ Manchester gig, the infinity loop of chaos that Fat Dog had set in motion seemed unstoppable.
“I don’t think we do that much,” shrugs Love, who recently found himself Googling the definition of ‘burnout’ (“It said I was calm, don’t worry”). Even after alcohol, heat and gruelling drives crushed them on one particular US tour, the pair have a buoyant outlook on the band’s demands. “We’ve minimised our peaks and troughs into smaller wavelengths,” says Hughes, who points out that he used to work a very different job, as a cheesemonger. “I’m always happiest when I’m doing this. [Off tour], you start overanalysing every single thing in your life. You lack self-actualisation.” Love says he would be lost without it: “I’d just eat cornflakes in my pants.”
As Fat Dog’s main songwriter and de facto decision-maker, Love has overseen many recent changes to their line-up. They’re currently a seven-piece, having hired and fired like Slipknot, save for Hughes and saxophonist Morgan Wallace, who have been permanent fixtures since 2022. “I’m like Stalin,” Love deadpans. “They’re just gone; no one talks about them.”
Given their relentless tour schedule, we ask if a consistent standard of dedication across all members is important to Love. “It’s not really up to me,” he responds. “To be fair, it’s all gone f****** wrong, and we’ve kept it going.” Persevering through these obstacles perhaps grants a fresh significance to the final lyric on ‘Woof.’: “You can kill the man, but you cannot kill the dog”.
Like every lyric or tangent the pair follow together, it’s best to take the title of their second album, ‘Cancel Me (I’m Tired)’, with a pinch of salt. As they ‘Smile And Wave’ through their chaotic lifestyle that sometimes “f**** you like a horse”, nodding to the penguins of Madagascar via a dance-punk doomsday, Love sounds tempted to give up – “put [his] feet up for a bit / Let AI write a hit” – when the grooved-up title track rolls around. But eventually, “you regain the strength”, he says today, as we mention the buzzword in that last lyric.
“I can see myself being one of those blokes who’s knocking down 5G towers,” seethes Hughes. “People think they’ll be getting some sort of government grant if their job goes,” Love says, picking up the thread, “but they’ll just be poor, and [a minority] will be getting massively rich. It’s all b*******, though. I f****** hate everything now; Instagram, ads on Instagram. ‘Please come to my gigs!’ Just make some tunes, keep your mouth shut.”
“If [making music] is f****** hard, it feels like you’ve conquered something” – Joe Love
Beyond the AI threat and tiredness, it becomes clear that Fat Dog are in this for the craft and the love of the game.“If [making music] is f****** hard, it feels like you’ve conquered something,” says Love, who hallucinated and averaged three hours’ sleep during Walthamstow studio sessions with producer Oli Bayston (Olivia Dean, Kelly Lee Owens). “I don’t mind getting ill. [But] I don’t think [producers] ever want to work with me again.” Having previously enlisted super-producer James Ford and the “snappy” Dan Carey, Love admits the difficulties of his own production style come with being “super OCD”. But as Hughes points out: “This isn’t just a job, it’s someone’s life, and so you go that extra mile.”
Love’s life and personal battles come into focus on ‘Cancel Me (I’m Tired)’. The pulsating frenzy of ‘Bad Dog’ is actually morbidly self-deprecating (“I’m a bad dog / Put me down if you please”), while a rare Fat Dog ballad, ‘Snakes’, offers out his hand: “Call if you’re feeling kind of sad”. The moody Editors-meets-Idles synth-rock of ‘Call It What You Want’ tackles unspoken family issues, but he’s reluctant to divulge the specific subject matter today.
“This thing you can’t speak about, but it’s running from family member to family member, and it passes itself down,” the frontman says, a little cryptically. “But no one’s made a word for it, because mental illness does not exist in old-school families.” “A lot of Brits in general are not the best at expressing things, even with the people you love the most,” adds Hughes, helping his bandmate out. “If Joe was telling a therapist about this stuff, these songs probably wouldn’t have been made. You’ve got to get it out somewhere, so maybe this is a good outlet.”
“I don’t know if Fat Dog fans want this,” Love caveats with a smile. “They just want sweaty bang bang [rock].” “But sometimes you need to make some music for yourself,” replies Hughes. And how does that affect Love? “It gives me massive peace,” he answers. “Music is a f****** great thing for that. If I feel sad, I can go to the studio and make a song about it. This album… sometimes, music, and especially Fat Dog, can be quite fictitious, like a version of yourself. I wanted to make something I actually feel.”
Hughes agrees: “You can entertain a crowd, but then you could actually entertain the part of you that [needs it].” Love looks momentarily puzzled. “To be fair, I much prefer the songs that are entertaining the crowd…”
That entertainment factor nearly hit another level when the team behind the UK’s Eurovision entry dangled the carrot in front of Fat Dog, saying: ‘This year, we’re looking for something a little different.’ The band brainstormed a “pub opera” titled ‘England Is My City’, before quickly realising they didn’t want to engage with any choreography or controversy as they withdrew from the conversations.
But how did they feel about the prospect of representing their nation, and what patriotism means in 2026? “It could get to a weird point where serious alt-right patriots are watching Eurovision, one of the campest things ever, for the first time, being like, ‘England is my city!’” laughs Hughes. “That’s a parody of itself.” Nevertheless, he says Fat Dog were never truly invested in the controversial event. “It would have p***** a bunch of people off, and we’re just trying to have a bit of fun. No one’s ever going to accuse us of being the most ‘with-the-picture’ band.”
Although a trip to the 2027 Song Contest in Burgas, Bulgaria isn’t on the horizon, an enormous homecoming at Brixton Academy does await Fat Dog, as they prepare to take their riotous live show back on the road. They may be ridiculously busy, but you’d be surprised if Fat Dog ever lost their batshit edge. This pair’s natural state is when they’re at their most unserious, making mischief and belly-laughing at each other’s one-liners.
“We’re all gonna have little dots from when we’ve gone to Turkey together to fill our hairlines in,” is Hughes’ prediction for the future. “We’re gonna have a bald period, like Baldy [Bombay] Bicycle Club, and then we’re gonna start making c***-rock,” piles on Love. “Imagine all the Radio 6 dads then! They’ll be Radio 6 great-grandads.” “Radio 6 ashes,” whispers Hughes, knowing he’s crossed a line. He gets himself back on track one last time. “It would be really nice to keep making this bigger, just keep it going. It’s the dream.”
Fat Dog’s ‘Cancel Me (I’m Tired)’ is out on October 2 via Domino.
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