Dr. Dog, a psychedelic five-piece from Philadelphia, have taken their time to emerge onto the global music scene. But with their fifth album Fate – the band’s most accessible and cohesive work to date – they’ve begun to gain kudos around the world.

It’s seen them on a virtual whirlwind of late: the band simply can’t seem to stop touring. They’ve gone from one side of the States to the other, then back again, and are also flitting off to Europe to showcase their wares there, with high hopes to come to Australia in the not-too-distant future.

“It’s a unique experience for us and not the norm,” outlines frontman Scott McMicken. “We normally just hop in a van and hit every town along the way, but we’re heading off on a European tour and stopping off in San Francisco for one show. It’s interesting, it’s surreal. The clock is a very unreliable thing at a time like this – your relationship with time gets a little warped and you can never quite understand or justify being tired or not being tired. It’s great to be able to travel in any capacity,” he continues, “either in a van or hopping in an airplane.”

Travelling and touring can, of course, have an adverse impact upon writing songs – it can either be inspiring (and how many bands haven’t been inspired be being on the road?) or demoralising (and the same goes for this side of the ledger too).

Scott explains that, having known co-songwriter Toby Leaman since they were kids, they have now been writing songs together for fifteen years or so. But it wasn’t something that they did because they needed songs in order to keep having albums for their band. Instead, Scott describes it as “…a very fulfilling form of expression that made the day go by easier.”

But writing on the road is a different matter altogether. “It affects the songwriting process quite a bit,” Scott admits. “Neither Toby nor I are the kind of people who can write on the road. It requires a certain pace that doesn’t exist on the road, and it requires a certain amount of stimulus and input and relationship with the world around that is building rather than fleeting, and coming and going every day.”

It probably doesn’t help, either, that a vast majority of the band’s time on tour is spent crashing at friend’s places on tour, or – if they’re really lucky – all crashing together on the floors of hotel rooms.

“When are you going to sit down, even if you have an idea?” he ponders. “The way it’s gone down for us is twofold: a) when we get home [from tour], Toby and I are both likely to have bursts of writing. For instance, we finished Fate in the beginning of March and we didn’t go out again til June or July, and in that time I wrote about fourteen songs. It’s feast or famine.”

Scott also considers Dr. Dog lucky in that they have an array of tunes sitting in their back catalogue, effectively ready to roll at any time. Already the band has cleared the decks once, self-releasing the digital-only Passed Away, Vol. 1. It’s a loose collection of demos, rough sketches and basic ideas that the band put out there as a reminder to audiences that, whilst recording Fate, they continued to exist.

“Toby or I could stop writing songs and I don’t think we’d have to stop making albums for another ten years!” Scott exclaims. “He and I were writing songs and collecting songs for at least five or six years before we were a band; we’ve always been joined at the hip in terms of having the idea of a band, and it being there one day. But in no way were we really pursuing it – we were happy to dream about it and happy to write, and were fulfilled.”

Fate is out now. Dr. Dog head down under this summer to play Pyramid Rock Festival, plus a bunch of shows alongside The Black Keys and Gomez.

Monday 29 Dec – Fremantle Arts Centre (With Black Keys)
Tuesday 30 Dec – HQ, Adelaide (With Black Keys)
Wednesday 31 Dec – Pyramid Rock Festival
Saturday 3 Jan – Coolangatta Hotel, Coolangatta (With Black Keys)
Sunday 4 Jan – Lake Kawana Community Centre (With Black Keys)
Monday 5 Jan – The Arena, Brisbane (With Black Keys and Gomez)
Thursday 8 Jan – Panthers, Newcastle (With Black Keys and Gomez)
Friday 9 Jan – Big Top Luna Park, Sydney (With Black Keys and Gomez)
Saturday 10 Jan – Waves, Wollongong (With Black Keys and Gomez)
Sunday 11 Jan – The Palais Theatre, Melbourne (With Black Keys and Gomez)