Live at ICA in London: Dog Unit

Since their inception in 2019, Dog Unit have written with the intention to make an entirely instrumental record sing. The intricacies of their sound, the formidable sense of tension and relief, take on a new gravitas when seen live. The mythology of this band – boiler-suited, arranged in a horseshoe formation and building worlds in a hypnotic, unbroken hour of music – only underlines their miraculous synergy. Sam Walton and Henry Scowcroft’s guitars take a pendulum-swing from wild, wailing feedback to melodic grace; bassist James Weaver constructs sleek, minimal wonders with supreme focus; and the beats of drummer Lucy Jamieson grounds these forces and carves their path forward.

2024 saw the deliverance of Dog Unit’s vision with their debut album, At Home. It was written not as individual pieces but as a suite of music that follows an arc of storytelling. There is the soft-bleed of ‘Concrete Barges on the Banks of The Thames’ as the scene is set; the dislocating jeopardy of its mid-point ‘We Can Still Win This’; the third-rail sparking danger of its final act, ‘Consistent Effort’, and the blissful sublimation of ‘The Dogs Are Barking Again’, its epilogue as the curtain falls.

An elevation of their forerunning EPs Barking to Gospel and Turn Right and Right Again, the quartet’s music is more ambitious – and more lovingly crafted – than ever before. Fluent in a dialect of their own creation with an instinct to run with the pack as far as their legs will take them, Dog Unit are a leaner, sharper beast than ever before.