Dr. Dog has been a personal favorite of mine for years, but for one reason or another I haven’t been able to catch the live show, leaving them pretty high on my concert wish list.  The band’s last three albums have become staples in my collection and I have had their latest album Shame, Shame pretty much playing on repeat since it’s release last month.  When the band announced a show in Washington D.C., only a few hours from our home base I decided it was about time to take a trip and make it happen.

Thanks to the 9:30 club’s start time namesake, most of the sold out crowd arrived early enough to catch the opening act Deer Tick, who’s strong opening performance no doubt sold a few pre-orders of their upcoming album The Black Dirt Sessions.  When Dr. Dog took the stage around 10:45, the next two hours flew by in what felt like dog years (or hours).  The band’s fun, high energy sound that is ever present on their albums, was only escalated in the live show.  As expected, the setlist put the spotlight on the new album Shame Shame, but wasn’t without it’s fair share of favorites from albums past including “The Rabbit the Bat and the Reindeer”, “The Way the Lazy Do”, “Hang On”, and “Die, Die, Die”.  The encore even featured a surprisingly heavily requested “Heart it Races” much to the delight of the up-front fans.

For a band that draws so many comparisons to bands like The Beatles and Beach Boys, who never played most of their best material live, Dr. Dog sure does put on quite the concert.  Their live show is actually quite ambitious, and doesn’t shy away from the harmonies and details that make their albums great.  There is a certain intensity in the live performance that adds another dynamic to this excellent group of songs.  I left the show loving the tunes from Shame, Shame even more, and the great performances of old favorites left me wanting to dig back into the older discs.

Somehow managing to exceed my impossibly high expectations, this turned out to be one of the best shows I have seen in quite some time.  Simply put, a Dr. Dog show is an absolute blast.