Dog Disco, like 1993's cult-making classic Mush, is full of native Leatherface inventions. Stubbs' weary "pub-etry" sometimes seems as fragrant with magic mushrooms as it is with Guinness, coining "suilcider," using "plastic surgery" as an adjective, and likening the daily grind to circling toy trains. Meanwhile, Stubbs' and Leighton Evans' guitars tangle like math rock while still charging like a woolly mammoth from the first notes of the opening "Hoodlum."
What's new on Dog Disco is that perennial pooper, maturity. But in the case of Leatherface, it's actually fertilizer. After seven albums, a new guarded optimism makes possible lines like "For years I tried to see the world as a child, now I see a child as the world"; it girds Dog Disco in the same way that a grim sense of purpose shot through Mush. Also, there's little swerving across the muscle/melody divide -- nearly all of the 12 tracks inject sweetness and fierceness with a single needle, giving the album a gratifying consistency.
Flip through MaximumRocknRoll or any other punk rag and you'll find plenty of bands that can't be described without a reference to Leatherface, but most will never deserve, much less transcend, the comparison. Dog Disco, Leatherface's second magnum opus, ensures that.
