Fat Dog make a glorious mess of Cancel Me (I'm Tired)

A melting pot of oscillating narratives, thunderous soundscapes, and sweeping, no-stone-left-unturned commentary, South London’s frantic, genre-defying septet aren’t just reinventing the wheel with each new release, they’re metamorphosing: blurring the lines of alternative music with their ambiguous and delightfully inscrutable songs. Sticking with the canine motif of their 2024 debut WOOF., Cancel Me (I’m Tired)’s artwork depicts a celestial pup, a shining beacon in angel wings against a grey-washed background. One might naïvely assume that this means their second output would be more uplifting, pure, or feature themes of a lighter nature, but feints aren’t only reserved for Hollywood movies. Where WOOF. ventured into frenetic Sprechgesang – imagine how A Grand Don’t Come For Free would’ve sounded if Mike Skinner had frequented dingier underground clubs and fell for the trances of grittier, more electro-led techno – Cancel Me (I’m Tired) is a more expansive and unpredictable beast. Though it was born from the chaos of seemingly endless touring, and penned in the aftermath of taking turns with burnout, the album does possess its lighter moments. Self-proclaimed as “quite wedding-y,...