TWO DOGS — People Do Strange Things

Parody, like anything else, has its regional variants. And like wine or chocolate, not every region’s soil will yield the best results. As someone who has made a home in multiple climates, the European version is the hardest of the parodic nuts to crack, especially Western EU. Why? Well, let’s just get this out of the way: it’s not very funny. Complicate this formula with the fact that the artists in question are Swiss, and that’s quite an uphill battle.

Enter Two Dogs and their current release, People Do Strange Things, which is a heavy-handed attempt at musical caricature if ever there was one. With nods to Tom Waits and Art Lindsay, among others, Two Dogs are not shy about their points of reference, nor are they about the dearth of inspiration — Zurich (yes, the whole city), said city’s baggage claim, the list goes on.

Unfortunately for this duo, who out themselves as proud subjects of the Continent with their pronunciation of “very”, the pretence is the clearest thing we get, the mashup of styles and musical genres fits thematically with each song, the electronica their lingua franca. I can’t say who might be tickled by People Do Strange Things, but I guess in the realm of potential listeners there must be someone.

Despite the duo’s own mention of Waits and Lindsay, the closest I could come to a legible influence was Negativland, which made me want to listen to their feral collagism again. Not a bad thing.