Dr. Dog

With roots in '60s pop and psychedelia, Philadelphia band Dr. Dog explored different sounds over the years, but their love of interesting sounds and strong melodies remained in place.  High-school friends Toby Leaman (bass) and Scott McMicken (guitar) began playing together as teens, while attending West Chester University they formed a more polished indie-rock band, Raccoon. Dr. Dog was originally their outlet for more abstract home recordings, but it became their main band after the release on The Psychedelic Swamp, a 35-track album that became increasingly difficult to find after the band got more famous.  2002's more widely distributed Toothbrush found a cult audience with its mix of polished songwriting and low-fi production. Nearly a dozen auxiliary members came and went, but by 2010 Leaman and McMicken had a permanent lineup with guitarist Frank McElroy, keyboardist Zack Miller and drummer Eric Slick. Among the fans of Toothbrush was My Morning Jacket leader Jim James, who invited Dr. Dog to open his band's tour in 2005. The following year's Easy Beat was their first album to get critical attention, with the band's eccentric humor (including numerous quotes from different stages of pop history) coming to the fore. They streamlined the sound on 2008's Fate, toning down the quirks and turning up the guitars; this became their highest-charting album at No. 86. They continued to make peace with hi-fi production, enlisting Rob Schnaupf (of Beck fame) as their first outside producer on the following year's Shame, Shame. And 2010's Be the Void was a bigger shakeup to their usual formula, with the songs built on organic live-band grooves. However recording remained their first love, and by 2013 the band had built its own Mt. Slippery studio, resulting in the wildly eclectic B-Room. The long-unavailable Psychedelic Swamp was finally reissued in 2016, though in reworked and partially re-recorded form; and 2017 brought a surprise album, Abandoned Mansion, initially dropped on Bandcamp as a benefit for the Southern Poverty Law Center. 2018's Critical Equation was their first for the Nashville-based Thirty Tigers label.