County Line by Dogs At Large

For a while, Dogs at Large bandleader Sam Pirruccello crossed his fair share of county lines as he traversed across the vast expanses of Chicagoland for work. From the window of a pickup truck, the manicured lawns of the northern suburbs might blur into the gleaming towers of the city, which in turn morph into the dark and looming shapes of industrial towers. Finally, they transform into a wasteland of decaying telephone poles and abandoned buildings thick with overgrowth, caught in the black hole of capital that has long since fled Indiana's gaping mouth. The transformation of the landscape feels organic and it's impossible to pick out exactly where its borders are - but there is clearly a divide.

Thematically and literally, County Line is haunted by these liminal and cloven psychic landscapes. The record was recorded in two sessions with two separate lineups. The first set of songs feature Steve Malito on pedal steel and Mallory Linehan on violin, and are comparatively more pastoral. Album highlight "Tennessee", a true blue country ballad about being abandoned in a dying urban rock scene by a lover in search of paradise, features some of the album's most direct and memorable songcraft. The second set of songs (recorded with keyboardist Andrew Marczak) balance the first out with a wooly and exuberant energy. Dogs at Large have certainly never recorded another song like Vogue Beauty, which Pirruccello refers to as "coked out glam rock". Even past the dueling walking guitar lines and riffs (which call to mind the undeniable cockiness - and catchiness- of the Rolling Stones "Start Me Up"), there's something deeply affecting about the way the characters in the song blur the boundaries between one another and find a spark of joy left in the excesses of inescapable consumerism. Other album highlights include the dark and noisy "I Don't See You Anymore," a lament for a one-time friend who has crossed a line from which there can be no return, and the wistfully humorous and harmony rich "Feels Like This Is The End".

Throughout the lineup changes and itinerant recording style, the core musical unit of the band sounds remarkably cohesive. Guitarist Jamie Yanda and longtime bassist Adam Gilmour trade off licks in the noisy, climactic instrumental coda of "I Don't See You Anymore," which is easily Dogs at Large's heaviest song to date. Elsewhere, the restrained arrangements allow moments like the tricky rhythmic flourishes drummer Chris Kolodziej adds to the verses of "Tennessee" to shine through. Not country, yet undeniably suffused with a certain rural power, County Line is clever, catchy and thematically timely.

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