CASH LANGDON - Dogs - LP - 'Notebook Yellow' Vinyl [MAY 2]

LP - Limited Edition 'Notebook Yellow' Coloured Vinyl. 

Cash Langdon’s new record Dogs kicks off with two sounds: a droning guitar, and a train whistle. When I hear it for the first time, I pause to make sure the train is in the recording. Having spent some time with Langdon, I have a feeling that it is. He’s a close listener – the kind of person nothing is lost on. It’s something you can hear in the observational lyrics of his last record, 2022’s Sinister Feeling; but on its follow-up, Dogs (out May 2 on Seasick Records), you can also hear it in the camaraderie he cultivates playing live with his band, a sonic energy that gives off the heat of his native Birmingham. Anyway, I was right. The train is on the track.

Other whirring sounds drift in and out of the opening title track for a minute, like a mower sputtering up to a start. Then Meadow Dust (Langdon’s longtime friends from Birmingham’s DIY scene, drummer Reagan Bruce and bassist Matt Whitson) drop into a crunchy, hypnotic groove. Their fuzzy take on heavy country rock has a worn-in no-fussiness that recalls Neil Young & Crazy Horse – nothing overthought, nothing understated. And like Young, Karen Dalton, or more recently, Cass McCombs – Langdon’s voice is simultaneously earnest and world-weary. Maybe it’s a weariness that comes with his penchant for noticing things: "Won’t see the moon tonight / Pollution covers the skies." But there’s a sense of humor, too, and a resignation to keeping on: “Taking the great unknown / Turn it into a favor.” This theme thrums throughout the record – that somewhere in the grind there lies an opportunity for alchemy.

Returning to Birmingham following a few years in D.C., Langdon moved into a neighbourhood called East Lake, where he wrote the songs on Dogs. He explains that the area is just beyond the reach of developers transforming it into tall-and-skinny condos, like much of the city, for a few reasons: crime, but also the amount of wild dogs roaming the area. “I couldn’t walk my dog in the neighbourhood for fear of her getting attacked,” he says. He wondered about the sick twist of fate that renders one dog a pet and another a threat. “It got me feeling like dogs were an interesting parallel to humans in the idea that no one asks to be born, and certainly no one can decide their fate in a socio-economic sense.” The title track has a companion in side B’s “Dead Dogs”– it’s a bit darker, more biting. After a particularly gnarled guitar solo, Langdon sings, “By routine we know it, cycle hard to break / City so full of hate / The voice of the devil says the streets are yours / Dead dogs of East Lake.” Across the album, he examines how these oppressive cycles overlap, intersecting the personal and the societal at all times.

Whether it’s the whine of wild dogs or a train whistle, Langdon’s attentiveness to the sounds of his hometown and its history runs deep. It’s something he resonated with early on when he met Whitson, who recorded his first band when he was just a teen. “In that session he put me onto so much cool music,” he says. “He also works on shows for Alabama Public TV that were super influential to my taste.” One of those shows, PBS’ Monograph, has featured Langdon and the crew hanging out at Portside Studios, the former location of the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound. It’s the spot where Bob Dylan once cut Slow Train Coming; and in 2023, where engineer Brad Timko (Dan Sartain, St. Paul and The Broken Bones) recorded Langdon and Meadow Dust’s basic tracks for Dogs live in only two days.

“We drove up on a Friday night and set up mics with plans to record Saturday and Sunday,” Langdon says of the weekend. “That night there was a tornado coming through the area. It felt a little scary, and we went to the basement for maybe 10 minutes. Brad went home, and the next morning he called to tell me that a huge tree had fallen through his house as a result of the storm.” Timko had slept in the house overnight, and still planned on going through with the session. “I encouraged him to re-book for another time,” Langdon recalls, “but he was adamant that we do it. Brad is one of the most intentional and serious engineers I’ve ever met.” The record sounds like the product of this kind of steely resolve, and the takes Timko captured of the band are fierce and tight.

After that fateful session, Langdon went on to record his vocals and Holly Herzfeld’s keys at home, and called up Caution and Saturday Night bandmate Nora Button to remotely record her breezy vocal harmonies. Their voices weave together effortlessly, particuarly on one previously unreleased Langdon-penned Saturday Night track called “Magic Again.” Its driving choogle and theme of longing (sung here as the feeling of an “itchy soul”) make it an easy fit with the rest of the pack on Dogs.

I’m reminded of the more melodic strains of Sonic Youth when one of the poppiest songs on Dogs is also one of the darkest. “Lilac Whiskey Noise” is the heartbeat of the record, written following an active shooter event that Langdon witnessed at work in 2016. It’s an indictment – not of the perpetrator – but of the systems of power that enable such an act. “Luckily for us no one was hurt,” he explains, “but it definitely drove me a little crazy. The song is mostly about still having humanity for these types of people, even when it directly affects you. My coworker actually appeared at the court case to argue that [the shooter] did not need prison time, rather he needed mental health resources.” The bridge’s lyrics nod to this co-worker advocating for restorative justice: “Won’t you come in from the cold / Of the darkest web untold / My friend’s begging on the stand / Please judge, give less time to that man.” The song is wildly catchy, an anthem you can sing along and relate to no matter the depth of your own experience with these issues. Langdon says, “I feel like the whole situation is such a relevant microcosm of the state of affairs in the US in regard to gun control, mental health, and political conspiracies.”

It’s a microcosm for all of the themes on the album, too: the ongoing violence of simply being awake to the world around you, and the resolve to stay awake anyway, to keep scratching at that itchy soul. On the tracks “Never Been” and album-closer “Nothing’s Good Anymore,” Langdon finds inspiration even closer to home in the lives of his ancestors. The latter is woozy with shoegaze, unfurling lyrics about working class troubles: “Round here glass is always breaking / And we’re spending more than we’re making / Heard your name from far away / And it makes me want to stay / Won’t you let me stay?” The choruses are punchy and resolute, intent on sticking around. At the end of the song when Langdon sings about overhearing someone say, “it’s crazy how nothing’s good anymore,” you can tell he’s tempted to agree. But then again, maybe it’s just like the train whistle – another thing he overheard and brought in to ruminate upon in the world of these songs. Either way, as I said before, nothing is lost on him – so he’s going to find what kernel of beauty he can. Dogs is a sonic map for finding that beauty everywhere and in just about anything. - Lou Turner

* Depiction of this product is a digital rendering and for illustrative purposes only. Actual LP colour/shade or detailing may vary.

Tracklist: 

Side A
1. Dogs
2. Magic Again
3. Never Been
4. Sight of Sound
5. Lilac Whiskey Noise

Side B
1. Warbird
2. Company of Punishment
3. Dead Dogs
4. Motion
5. Nothing's Good Anymore