Since welcoming a child into the world a little over a year ago, time for gigs or much else has been limited, to say the least. So, when the band Hound, whose members are all based in my hometown, invited me to join them for a gig, I jumped at the chance to get back out to live music and decided to cover the evening for RAMzine.
When asked, Hound will tell you that they are five thirty-somethings with bad knees and broken dreams. Playing a blend of upbeat, heavy pop-punk with Emo that takes you back to the days when your main concern was your Myspace top eight and making sure your coding was up to scratch so your profile appeared just right. I realise this is a sentiment that will be lost on anyone younger than a millennial and I have therefore aged myself, which I tend to do a lot within the pages of RAM.
Hound are a relatively new project, having endured a setback (which we’ll get into in the interview) but despite their young career they have enjoyed over 70k streams, have been rotated by BBC Introducing and enjoyed airplay from BSB TV, Amazing Radio, Cambridge 105, Future Hits Radio to name a few.
As I mentioned, this was a hometown show for the guys, and the evening started as many gig nights do by lugging merch and equipment up two flights of cramped stairs into the venue along with an unexpected, electronic relic in the form of a small CRT TV, the use of which would be revealed in time. Going against the tradition of drummers being late, it was the bassist who was held up, having seemingly ignored all warnings about the guaranteed disruption on the road leading to the venue due to Peterborough United’s match having just finished. However, once everyone was in the building and accounted for (including the two other bands on the bill) the festivities began. There was a slight venue power issue meaning the mystery of the CRT television would continue on a little longer, but there was much joy at the merch table that a staple gun had been brought and the band’s array of t-shirts and hats could be displayed properly, something I’m told had been an issue at previous shows.
When power was eventually restored to this corner of the venue, the CRT finally burst to life with a retro TV ad showing off all the merch whilst music ripped directly from the original SIMS video game blared through its aged and crackling speakers, creating a strange vaporwave aesthetic in a pretty unique way to draw attention to the stall once the punters flood through the door.
Finding some downtime between soundcheck and the doors opening, I sat down with Dan (Guitar) and Jamie (Vocals) to chat about the band and their upcoming EP The Way A Dog Loves Pizza is due out via self-release on Nov 29th.
RAM – You mentioned in your press sheet that you’re five different guys with different musical tastes and backgrounds, what are those backgrounds and how did Hound come to be?
Dan – I was in a band with our drummer Mark back in the “Myspace days”, and when that folded, Mark met Croft, our other guitarist (in Hound) and they started a band. I’ve known Rob since we both worked at Asda years ago. In 2021 we came together, myself, Mark, Croft and Rob to start a pop-punk project and Rob was working with Jamie at the time.
Jamie – I’ve known Rob for about ten years or so, we actually went to college together, but I hadn’t seen him for about a decade until I went to work in editing and he was working at the same place. He said he was in a metal band and asked if I wanted to sing in the band.
Dan – So when we started we weren’t really pop-punk, we were more metalcore (following the addition of Rob).
Jamie – I don’t listen to a lot of metalcore so I kind of took it and pushed things towards the pop-punk space.
Dan – When he (Jamie) sent his first demo track through it was just like “Holy shit, this is completely not what we were expecting” but it just fit. The first track was called ‘Circling’ and it was almost like groove metal with Jamie’s pop-punk vocals over the top. What really interested me in the early days, finding our sound, as we were taking all of these different music styles and we were whacking all these different vocal styles over the top and it just sounded dope.
Jamie – We’ve just got really different musical tastes, haven’t we? You guys all your heavy stuff and I like pop and hip-hop and pop-punk and really cheesy stuff.
RAM – I know you Dan and Rob have been in metal bands (locally) in the past, Jamie have you been in many projects prior to Hound?
Jamie – Yeah man, I was in a band called Centre Excuse (guitar and backing vocals), in 2010 through to 2012 and we did alright right back then, we got to play with Twenty Twenty, I don’t know if you know them? They did the Horrid Henry theme for the film? After that, I was in another project in 2015 called Small Talk Smiles and it was there that I started writing. Then after a break, in lockdown, I started doing sort of, I guess, melodic emo, almost emo rap stuff and did some stuff as Jamie RX and that had some success too, in Brazil oddly enough.
RAM – Brazil?
Jamie – Dude, there was a point where I was getting over a hundred thousand monthlies on Spotify in Brazil. The BBC Introducing picked some of it up and I just struggled to follow up, I just couldn’t write the songs quickly enough so it, unfortunately, fell by the wayside until I met up with Rob again and this beautiful baby was born.
RAM – So would you say Hound’s current style and sound, came from Jamie’s demo tape? Did that force or solidify your identity as a band?
Dan I think so yeah, as you’ll hear tonight and you’ve heard on the EP, there are drastically different styles in this band. To name a few, we have ‘Circling’ which is on the heavier side of things, we’ve got ‘The Ballad of an Ageing Milleninal’ which is very pop punk. Then there’s ‘The Reverse’ which is almost post-hardcore.
Jamie – Post-hardcore? I’d say it’s more straight-up Emo!
RAM – I was listening to that track this morning and it reminded me a lot of A Day To Remember.
Jamie – A lot of people say that, I’ve never actually listened to them! The others keep saying songs I’ve written sound like this and that (ADTR) and they get pissed off because I’m just like, what is that?
Dan – A Day To Remember and Story of the Year are kinda where we feel we sit in terms of comparison…
Jamie – I just don’t have those references which is so funny
Dan – But it’s a natural progression (from finding the band’s sound) and we understand the Story of the Year reference and their second album, In the Wake of Determination. They started quite pop-punky and Emo and then they moved to a really heavy sound. We have so many styles as we said, we’ve just evolved and now found where we sit, all of these songs (on the EP) are really the first two years of the band and us finding ourselves, As for our direction going forward we hope to be a lot more refined, growing into our space, we don’t know what that space is just yet because we’re still working on it but the new music we’ve written is definitely not as heavy as the older stuff.
Jamie – Over the past two years we’ve been figuring out how to write together, a lot of our stuff was written remotely then brought together in a Frankenstein way and we got something cool out of it. My lung actually collapsed so following that, it meant we had to write in a completely different way and a different key. There was a time (whilst recovering) that we hadn’t put anything out for a while so that’s how ‘Ballad of an Ageing Millenial’ came about, it was an old demo track I had lying around and these guys rocked it up because it was originally an Emo song. Then as everyone started pitching more and more stuff the sound just came together, which was really cool. So what you’re hearing on the EP is five guys figuring out how to play together and we think it’s dope.
Dan – There is a big play on nostalgia too, there are a few sing-along parts and parts we really want the crowd’s involvement with.
RAM – That leads me nicely to my next question actually, you have this nostalgia theme running through the whole project, obviously that resonates with our age group as millennials, but what do you offer the younger generations and what has their feedback been on the band’s identity?
Dan – Well when we played with Paramore, not the real Paramore, but Paramore GB, that was during freshers week in Cambridge and it was a room full of nineteen and twenty-year-olds.
Jamie – The kids loved it…
Dan – We can’t really put our finger on why, admittedly they’re not our target audience, but there is something that really resonated with them and I think there is gravitation from younger people towards a lost counter-culture and nostalgia, even though it’s not their nostalgia.
Jamie – It’s also very convenient for us that Y2K nostalgia is very “in” at the moment too. The songs all have a youthful energy to them, even if the lyrics are about getting old and being depressed about it. It’s all stuff people can relate to you know… and it’s just catchy! Another part of it is that we like putting on a fun show and everyone wants to have fun no matter how old you are.
Dan – Yeah and the songs we’ve written and the techniques we’ve used to write them, it’s nostalgia-driven but we’ve brought that style of music up to the twenty-twenties standard. Like a modern take on the old genres.
RAM – So the old styles seen through a modern lens?
Dan – Exactly yeah…
RAM – While we are on the subject, how many of you kept Tom as a friend on Myspace?
Jamie – (Laughs) I kept Tom until the end! I don’t think I had enough friends to not have Tom in there, he was in the top eight by default.
RAM – So Tom was your buffer?
Jamie – Oh yeah… I miss Myspace!
Dan – The world was just a better place when Myspace was around.
RAM – We’ve touched on the band’s sound and influences but what bands specifically inspire the sound of Hound?
Dan – As we’ve said, A Day to Remember, Story of the Year for the musical side of things. I don’t write a massive amount of the music but the way I write riffs and things are inspired by heavier bands.
Jamie – Yeah I feel like you bring your heavy inspirations and it just adds that extra layer of texture you know?
Dan – Yeah, I chuck live pinch harmonics in where I can too!
Jamie – Mine is very simple, it’s Blink 182 and Sum 41 but I love Jamie T and a lot of indie like that, early Artic Monkeys. I’m a massive hip-hop guy, like early 2000’s hip-hop? I’m a massive Juice Wrld fan, that’s where a lot of my stuff comes from. Just a lot of catchy hooks dude. It’s so cliche for a white, thirty-year-old millennial!
RAM – As a fairly young project, what challenges have you had to face in the modern scene?
Jamie – I think the main problem with the modern scene is you’ve just got to make content, like it or not and it’s so much harder than you think it’s going to be. If you’re not naturally versed in that, so you have to almost rewire your brain, Luckily, Dan has taken the lead on that, I’m the youngest in the band but I’m the oldest when it comes to that shit, I swear to god! The other one is timing your gigs well, when we hit the freshers week it worked really well and hometown gigs are always sick but when you go out of town and it’s a Thursday night or something, people just aren’t going to those shows anymore. A decade ago I could see it going that way but it’s like doubled down now you know?
Dan – The hardest thing from my perspective is finding the right shows, realising there’s not a lot of (small venue) promoters left out there. So we learnt that we need to be booking our own shows, but that brings a big financial risk. Then there’s the fact, that we can make great content but we’ve not quite cracked the Instagram code just yet.
Jamie – And we haven’t even dipped our toes in Tik-Tok yet and we really need to.
Dan – We posted a Reel the other day and it absolutely flew, but ever since we’ve not been able to replicate it. We’re trying to figure out the key to that. Also having families and wanting to be rock stars is one thing as well I guess (laughs). You want to pour time into it but you also feel guilty for being away, playing shows and stuff, but the band is like having another family.
Jamie – And you fight just as much as you do with your family as well!
RAM – You kind of touched on my next point there, I was going to ask how has gigging changed over the past ten years or so?
Dan – As I said, there are fewer promoters and fewer venues nowadays.
Jamie – One thing I am happy about is there are less Buy-ons! I used to hate that back in the day.
Dan – Yeah not so much pay-to-play nowadays, which is good.
Jamie – But more financial risk on bands… but it helps to have kickass merch, Pizadog t-shirts are available now! (laughs)
Dan – All of our merch is print-on-demand, so you can create these amazing designs, and then order a small batch to test the waters before going big with them.
Jamie – I was speaking with the singer from my old band, from like 2010 and he still has a bunch of old t-shirts in his garage that were never sold, so we don’t really have that risk anymore. I’ll tell you what the big thing is, you don’t have to lug about big, heavy amps so much because the gear is so good now. Gigging back in the day, old guys would rock up with their tube heads and be like “Oh you don’t have vintage hardware blah blah blah…” and now we have like multi-effects pedals and they can do everything and sound way better than any of my old expensive gear used to.
RAM – So it’s not all doom and gloom out there then?
Dan – I mean, from what I remember from back in the day, I am a lot more involved in the admin in this band than others and there are always stresses and bumps in the road, but with all the tools we have now, social media, tools on stage etc. It’s easier for bands out there in that sense.
RAM – That being said, what can a crowd expect from a Hound show?
Dan A lot of strobe! A good time, bouncing around liem idiots, banter, and crowd participation.
Jamie – We love a sing-along! We just like to keep it fun dude.
RAM – The EP is due on the 29th, is there a full length in the works?
Dan – We have a lot bubbling away but nothing concrete just yet.
Jamie – We’ll probably put out another EP in the first half of next year, and then we’ll see how it goes but there is a lot of stuff we are doing, we are bringing a lot of production stuff back in-house which is good. We’ve got a good space that we’re turning into a studio, our main focus will then be, better quality songs and more of them, more often. When we put out ‘Ghost in the Grey’ it was six months at least before we released anything else and then a year before anything else because I was recovering. I wasn’t allowed to sing again until May this year after my lung collapsed in November last year. It’s taken a lot of time to get the momentum back and it’s really cool to have that momentum back, we’ve had a lot of radio play and we got the Whetus okay, which was sick! There is just going to be more from Hound next year.
RAM – So let’s unpack that, you’ve had the BBC introducing rotation and the radio play, how has that been for metrics and exposure?
Jamie – Shout out Matt Plumb (At BBC). It’s been great for clout because if you want to get on the bigger shows you need to show that the industry is recognising you so it’s been good for that and team morale, that’s one thing it’s fucking good for.
Dan – In terms of growth, it’s been good for our local shows. We’ve got a ton of new fans and sold a ton of merch.
Jamie I actually fought with the guys about doing less shows and focusing more on the content but we’ve got most of our fans who are travelling to see us from those local shows so I eat my words on that one. If you put on a memorable show for people, that’s better than any clip.
Dan – There is nothing better than someone you don’t know wearing your shirt, that’s sick.
RAM – That’s good to hear, live music sadly doesn’t have the pull that it used to, a lot of bands are finding that just putting content out there and getting the streams is enough, some don’t want to play many shows, so it’s refreshing to hear about a band playing shows and building a following from live music.
Jamie – It’s so good, I do love playing the shows.
RAM – So how did you get the thumbs up from Wheatus?
Jamie – Dude, that was so cool. We got the stank face from the teenage dirtbag himself.
Dan – It was on a Twitch channel called Blood, Sweat and Beers, shout out to them, Ben and Danny. We submitted a song to them, they liked it and they selected it for the show. They play ten songs and every week they have a guest. So we got the stank face from Brenden (B. Brown).
Jamie – Yeah, he said he liked the vocals, he liked the melodies and to get that okay from him was cool. It’s just that validation you know? Someone you respect likes your shit and that’s dope.
RAM – We’ve touched on the collapsed lung and the setback that caused but did it solidify the will to pursue the band, did the guys rally around to get you through it?
Jamie – It was good in a couple of ways, in the lead-up, I was a bit flaky because I was stoned all the time and after the collapse everyone jumped into action like we said, that’s how Ballad came about, I had it written, these guys wrote the music and Croft put it all together and I actually listened to it from my hospital bed and thought this was sick. Then when I was out, we had a music video shoot but I was on painkillers and not able to do that much, but it allowed us to sit and write. We played a few shows and started getting the bug for it and it did take the wind out of our sails a bit because we were starting to get momentum, and then literally we had the air taken out of us. But we really focused on writing…
Dan – We wrote ‘Katie’ we wrote ‘I wish was a Kid…’ and ‘Homeward’ which isn’t on this EP but will be on the next one.
Jamie – We really fell into the flow of writing. It took me a while to find my voice again but I think I’m a better singer now because of it.
As the guys mentioned, Hound are consistently writing music and refining their live show, with more releases promised throughout 2025. As we concluded our chat, it was time for soundcheck and then the doors were flung open to the waiting punters.
Hound’s set was incredibly energetic, they got everyone on their feet, bopping and singing along with their infectious enthusiasm for just having a damn good time on stage. Sometimes the opening band can struggle to get the crowd engaged, people are at the bar, meeting friends or distracted in other ways but that wasn’t the case for the guys, they held everyone’s attention from start to finish, with their bright colours, intense strobe show and antics on stage. Being the opening act (for Myspace of Yours) tonight was not an issue, it was the perfect set-up for what would go on to be an excellent night, the band lifted everyone’s mood and brought a great vibe to the venue. It won’t be long until Hound is the headline act and will hopefully receive the same service from whoever opens up for them.
As for the EP, The Way a Dog Loves Pizza is just as the guys described, it’s anthemic, it’s punchy and impossible to ignore. The band’s energy bleeds through into their sound and even though the lyrics may be a reminder to us all that we are getting older and that the good old days will always be behind us, no matter what generation we belong to, they have a way of making an existential crisis feel like a party. We’ve all found ourselves in the situations presented in Hound songs, we’ve all felt overwhelmed, we’ve all had relationship issues and we’ve all wished someone would love us the way a dog loves pizza (check out the EP’s title track for reference) but seldom have we been in such a good mood while thinking about it, such is the power of Hound.
The Way A Dog Loves Pizza is slated for self-release on November 29th and will be available on Spotify. For more info, follow @thebandhound on all socials.
