Description
The moment the needle drops on Bite, the new A Giant Dog record, ones conception of what an A Giant Dog record sounds like bends like space and time around a starship running at lightspeed. The biggest point of departure is that Bite is a concept album, concerning characters who find themselves moving in and out of a virtual reality called Avalonia. A Giant Dogs first album of original songs since 2017s Toy, Bite finds the band – Sabrina Ellis, Andrew Cashen, Danny Blanchard, Graham Low, and Andy Bauer – at their peak as musicians, challenging themselves with more complex arrangements and subject matter that forced them out of their heads and into those of the characters who occupy this supposed paradise. We had to find ourselves within, or project ourselves into, the principal characters. We developed them, got to know their minds, emotions, and motivations, and then expressed those in nine songs, Ellis explains. Themes of addiction, gender fluidity, living ethically in a capitalist society, physical autonomy, avarice, grief, and consent bubble beneath the promised happiness of Avalonia. This is evident in songs like Different Than, where Ellis sings, My body cant explain the things my mind dont comprehend as if societal gender pressure is squeezing its protagonist out of their skin. The songs on Bite are full of bombast, at turns calling to mind the spacefaring operatic rock of Electric Light Orchestra and the high drama of an Ennio Morricone film score. The albums narrative sweep is epic in scope, its characters facing impossible odds and certain doom, existing as comfortably with the sci-fi grandiosity of Thin Lizzys Jailbreak as it does with the high fantasy of Dio and Iron Maiden.
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