Dogs Die In Hot Cars - Pop Nonsense

Two things are constant in this poptastic world of ours. Everyone appears to be looking for both the new Jellyfish and XTC. For us XTC fanatics, we can see, hear, smell, touch, taste them. From The Sugarplastic through The Futureheads to Field Music.

Dogs Die In Hot Cars released their debut album. Please Describe Yourself, in 2004 and a splendid album it was too.

Quirky pop at it's best. The comparisons to XTC were obvious and still are.

Produced by Langer and Winstanley, Madness it isn't, probably a little more in touch with Deaf School. The album can be bought for under £2 including postage on Amazon.

They were signed to V2 and what a strange old mess that label was. Branson folly! 95% owned by Morgan Stanley, what was that all about?

Hailing from St Andrews in Scotland, the band were typical of the great stuff coming out of Scotland at that time. Angular Pop at it's most splendid. The critics loved it, a sure fire way for a band with XTC comparisons to sell nothing. There was lots of Promo, but nothing really made a dint. There were two live sessions for KCRW and KEXP.

The band began recording the demos to their follow up, Pop Nonsense in 2006. However at the end of the sessions, after the departure to University of guitarist, Gary Smith, the band abandoned the recordings. In the mass V2 cull in 2007, the band were dumped.

In 2008, the posted the 17 demos on their website with instrumental tracks too, so that fans could remix the songs in anyway the liked.

The results could be sent to the band who would pick their favourites and split the royalties 50-50 when the album was released. The band abandoned the mixing project saying that there wasn't enough content to release the project.

Then the 17 songs in advanced demo form were put on the band's website for free download. People were encouraged to do what they wanted to incorporate them into songs with 50% of the royalties going to the band.

These songs are long deleted, so I've linked them for download below. If anyone from or connected to the band have a problem with this, I will take them down straight away.

They are on a We Transfer download link which will expire in 7 days.

01 Something for the Good Boys
02 Pop Nonsense
03 Real
04 Big Big Love
05 Beauty Us
06 Me Me Me
07 Charo
08 Serious
09 Here
10 Like Music To My Ears
11 Emergency Party
12 Bloke In The Toilet
13 Trials and Errors
14 Christmas
15 To Get Love Returned
16 Squeeze
17 Plutonic Dancing

Pop Nonsense download 


Craig Macintosh released an album in 2010, The Lie. It's much more mellow than the DDIHC material, but it's a great listen. You can buy it for download on Amazon.

Drummer, Laurence Davey is soon to release an album as Note To Self. You can listen to some of the songs here and follow the Facebook site here

As a finale, here's one more song from the debut, the band more in Kaiser Chiefs mode.