Album Review – Slaughter Beach Dog, Welcome

Welcome is the new record from Slaughter Beach, Dog, the new side project from Jake Ewald of Modern Baseball, this is a completely self recorded album with Jake playing every instrument on every track on Welcome. Slaughter Beach, Dog leans a little more into indie rock than his main project, and to my mind is more reminiscent of the style of bands like The Weakerthans. This project was started as a way for Jake Ewald to experiment with different styles of writing, contrasting the deeply personal nature of his compositions for Modern Baseball. 

Welcome is a concept album, all of the songs are written about fictional characters living in Slaughter Beach, whilst the style of writing is different from that of Modern Baseball, this has a similar feel musically, that shouldn’t surprise anyone given Jake Ewald is the primary songwriter for that band. This is an album of laid back indie tunes centred around the fictional town of Slaughter Beach, it isn’t until the third track kicks in that anything grabs my attention, Monsters is a fine track as is Forever ,but I found that Slaughter Beach had few points of interest, as with any town, including fictional ones, there are a few places you like to go and visit, and maybe even a very few that you take your friends to because you want to share the experience it offers, but for me Slaughter Beach is a little too quiet and predictable.

If you’re a fan of Modern Baseball this will make a fine companion album to the Holy Ghost album that was released earlier this year, but I feel that this is a case of the sum of their parts being greater than the individual, which is a shame as the concept and musicianship on Welcome are fine, and all the more impressive that it’s the work of a solo artist but I doubt I’ll be re-visiting Slaughter Beach anytime soon.

Welcome can be ordered from Lame-O records here