Grandmas House – DOG
Grandmas House return with “DOG”, their first release since Slaughterhouse (W05) and a sharp re-entry on Brace Yourself Records. The Bristol quartet — Yasmin Berndt (vocals, guitar), Poppy Dodgson (vocals, drums), Zoë Zinsmeister (bass), and Polly (guitar) — recorded the track with Ali Chant at The Playpen in Bristol, with mastering by Felix Davis at Metropolis. Chant’s credits include PJ Harvey and Yard Act, and you can hear that production sensibility here: raw and immediate, but nothing left to chance.
The song grew out of a period when a band member was dealing with chronic illness and medical dismissal. Lyrically, that comes through in the push-pull between pain and the systems supposed to relieve it — doctors offering pills as the only answer, a body that won’t comply. The chorus resolves into a single image, someone reduced and cornered, “down on my knees feeling like a D.O.G.” It’s not subtle, but it doesn’t need to be. What catches my ear is the surf-inflected chorus drop — it’s an unexpected move in a track that’s otherwise coiled and angular, and it lands exactly where it should, making the weight of the verse feel earned by contrast.
Polyphonic vocal harmonies add a layer that separates this from straightforward post-punk. The rawness is still there, but the arrangement has more range than you might expect.
