Notebook Yellow Colour

Tracklist:

1. Dogs
2. Magic Again
3. Never Been
4. Sight of Sound
5. Lilac Whiskey Noise
6. Warbird
7. Company of Punishment
8. Dead Dogs
9. Motion
10. Nothing’s Good Anymore

Nothing is lost on Cash Langdon. Its something you can hear in the observational lyrics of his last record, 2022s Sinister Feeling; but on its follow-up, Dogs, you can also hear it in the camaraderie he cultivates playing live with his band Meadow Dust, a sonic energy that gives off the heat of his native Birmingham. The trios fuzzy take on heavy country rock has a worn-in no-fussiness that recalls Neil Young & Crazy Horse nothing overthought, nothing understated. And like Young, Langdons voice is simultaneously earnest and world-weary but theres a sense of humor, too, and a resignation to keeping on (Dogs, Magic Again). Recorded at Portside Studios (the former location of the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound) in just two days, engineer Brad Timko (Dan Sartain, St. Paul and The Broken Bones) captured Langdon and Meadow Dust at their fiercest yet. The title track Dogs and side B heater Dead Dogs both take inspiration from the wild dogs Langdon encountered in his neighborhood at the time of writing the record, where he wondered about the sick twist of fate that renders one dog a pet and another a threat. Across songs, he examines how oppressive cycles overlap, intersecting the personal and the societal at all times. The heavy yet melodic Lilac Whiskey Noise is the heartbeat of the record, written following an active shooter event that Langdon witnessed at work in 2016. Its an indictment not of the perpetrator but of the systems of power that enable such an act. Its a microcosm for all of the themes on the album, too: the ongoing violence of simply being awake to the world around you, and the resolve to stay awake anyway.

On the crunchy album-closer Nothings Good Anymore, Langdon sings about overhearing someone say just that and you can tell hes tempted to agree. Hes going to find what kernel of beauty he can. Dogs is a sonic map for finding that beauty in just about anything.