Mechanical Canine

About

The devotedly DIY Philly emo-punk band are on their third effort, following 2020’s <a href="spotify:album:5RfJsfp2QOQY0MWQdSm38S" data-name="Good Photography">Good Photography</a> and 2022’s <a href="spotify:album:0zpOL3XHSzOIJNYPyQT0VL" data-name="Walls Covered In Mildew">Walls Covered In Mildew</a>. The debut was a Radiohead-indebted take on indie-punk by a new college band testing its capabilities, and its follow-up trimmed down the fat into a whirlwind of Walsh’s inner dialog set to zany rock music, unconstricted by any preconceived notions of the emo tag’s boundaries. <a href="spotify:album:06Oo1gJ2wEL8CTXLYd8VsS" data-name="To My Chagrin">To My Chagrin</a> is a further sharpening of the band’s sound. Thirteen tracks fly by in 23 minutes, and the first 11 are an assortment of 30-second intrusive thoughts blurted into mini-songs, and two-minute bangers squeezing multiple compelling ideas — maybe a country strut or a folksy outro — into the songs’ anti-structures that inevitably revert to punk meter. It’s all over the place. If you hear a catchy hook, don’t expect its return. Within the unpredictable course of a <a href="spotify:artist:0iO6r7KuOmxuc3d0991A4L" data-name="Mechanical Canine">Mechanical Canine</a> song is a look-alike reflection of Walsh’s self, and the picture isn’t always pretty. On lead single “<a href="spotify:album:5pqErUrZUSlMarZF0h3xZP" data-name="Mechanical Canine Saves Emo">Mechanical Canine Saves Emo</a>,” he drops perhaps the deepest-cutting couplet on the LP: “Reality sank my realized dreams / And it could sink me / I’m barely treading.” It’s a defeatism that pops up throughout the LP; the tragic monologue of a chronic overthinker.

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