Dog Park: the band who claim to have written “the worst album in the world”
As a music editor, my inbox is littered with an average of 139 pitches per day from various PRs. Thus, there comes a point where you figure you’ve seen everything the world of self-promotion has to offer. However, only a fool would truly write off the innovative ways of the modern generation. Battling against the tide of almost a century of pop music and the present barrage of 123,000 songs being released per day, when we corresponded with Dog Park, they threw us a novel curveball hitherto unknown.
The prompt was simple: we asked them to put forth their pithy indictment of ‘The Worst Song in the World’ as part of our recurring feature on the tracks that drive the artists we admire crazy. Mostly, the hurdle we face getting this angle over the line is bands taking the concept a little seriously, and they decline the chance to ‘disseminate negativity’, pitching a more appeasing alternative, as though we’re asking them to smear shit over Mona Lisa. This seems like a very 2024 phenomenon. Dog Park didn’t take this route.
In fact, Dog Park wanted to expand the horizons of the feature to incorporate an entire album rather than a single track. Most startling of all, they wanted to smear this denigration upon themselves. “Our album, Festina Lente, is probably the worst album in the world,” they began. “Composed by four musicians from France, the US, and Brazil, who are so ADHD that they don’t know how to stick to just one instrument or vocalist, they have to switch around between each song” and by the band’s own admission, this results in a mess.
Veering into the third-person, as though oddly distancing themselves from their own self-loathing, Dog Park added: “They also have the worst band name, Dog Park, as if there were not already enough bands with ‘dog’ in the title,” they explain, ensuring that everyone is now thinking about Dr Dog and their canine cohorts. Their diatribe continued: “They could have thought of something more original, such as Okapi Habitat.”
The quirkiness of this odd response to a feature idea steadily reveals more and more about the disposition of the band. “Just ask Anonymous Mansplainer: ‘It helps having three women in the band’ and their success has nothing to do with their songwriting or music-playing capabilities,” they add, seemingly citing criticism they’ve received from a cynical online bastard.
But the DIY outfit are not content just to criticise their music, name and constitution. They continue: “Clearly low-budget music videos they filmed and edited themselves, often in a ‘lo-fi’ aesthetic, but we are living in 2024 where an iPhone or one-minute TikTok video would suffice. Luckily, their album cover was made by a real artist, which gives at least one good reason to buy the album. Although, it’s better on display than in the record player.”
Naturally, it’s relatively transparent that this is a covert way of essentially saying: We’re an ironic international ensemble of multi-instrumentalists who go about being in a band like a quirky art collective, exhibiting a DIY ethos and embracing individualism. That’s how they sound, too. Nevertheless, there is still something fascinating about why they chose to present themselves like this. It seems to say a lot about the dense musical landscape of 2024.
The forthcoming album, Festina Lente, is not the worst album in the world—far from it, in fact. Ironically, it says a lot about the inventiveness and personality of the band behind it that it was put forth in this manner; some may well find it gratingly ingratiating, and others will find it fun and free-spirited. There is a dose of both in their music, but it is certainly something fresh.
