“Goodnight, Big Dog.
Goodnight, girls and boys.”

Words that no doubt resonate with many kids raised to NBN Newcastle in the 90s: kids ushered off to bed by television’s oversized, anthropomorphic Big Dog in his nightcap and gown. One such Novocastrian is Mark Whittaker, of Sydney country-shoegaze collective Big Dog. Drawing on a wealth of experience in the diverse Newcastle and Sydney scenes, Big Dog chart those dreamy recesses of the psyche to which their TV namesake stood as gatekeeper for a generation—all bathed in the warm glow of friendship and the pure pleasure of performance.

Comprising Shane Byrnes on lead guitar, vocals, and bass; Sam Kluge (ex-The Mothers Club) on rhythm guitar and bass; Mark Whittaker (Hopes, Central West) on lead guitar, bass, and vocals; Netta Mae on vocals, acoustic guitar, synths, and bassoon, and drummer Simon Metcalfe, Big Dog is a testament to the unquantifiable alchemy that results from a group of friends embarking upon a shared creative revelry.

Named for Netta’s soulful greyhound Buster and emerging from a string of sprawling jam sessions, Big Dog’s final lineup coalesced organically, pulling together the several threads of friendship and shared musical fascinations.

Big Dog draws inspiration from a host of stellar sources, from Tom Morello to Paul Kelly: Shane’s love of Townes Van Zandt and the raw immediacy of blues greats including Freddy King finding a ready home alongside Sam’s admiration for dark country iconoclast Orville Peck and triple-guitar peers Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, and Mark’s love of Mazzy Star and shoegaze legends from My Bloody Valentine to Slowdive, while Netta draws from the same oft-shadowy wellspring as singer-songwriters from Neko Case to Sarah Shook to Phoebe Bridgers.

“I come from a rock and punk background, and Mark and I bonded over shoegaze,” Sam explains. “Then there’s Shane’s blues playing—it all came together, and that’s where the whole country-shoegaze vibe came from.”

“I’ve spent hours poring over Kevin Shields’ pedal board photos,”
Mark relates. “And I thought, how do I do that? But how do I make it mine, somehow?”

It’s this deeply sympathetic marriage of pedal-and-gear experimentation, the obsessive search for new tones and sounds, and earthy playing and songwriting that thrills at the heart of Big Dog’s incomparable sound.

Big Dog is a true meeting of minds—encompassing a formidable lineup of three guitarists, three songwriters, and three lead vocalists. More than the sum of its parts, Big Dog is a band of ineffably Australian resonance and authenticity, right down to a shared commitment to natural, unvarnished vocal delivery. Big Dog’s songs range freely from the heaving swell of the East Coast to the scorched Australian interior.

To record debut singles ‘Fight It Now’, ‘Deep Dive’, and ‘I Used To Feel It All The Time’, Big Dog decamped to Shane’s childhood home in the Blue Mountains, settling in with co-producer Oliver “Oli” Young in front of an open hearth, gazing out over the monumental cliffs of the Jamison Valley.

“An important part of the session was that it was coming home,” Shane relates. “It wasn’t just a studio.”

Fuelled by homegrown cumquats and communal meals, the session resulted in a creative partnership between producer and band that yielded some of the most exciting sounds to emerge from the cloistered world of 2020.

The difficult circumstances that gave rise to these songs played an integral part in their special, luminous quality. The forced isolation brought about by Covid-19 proved a catalyst for refining each track to a crystalline lustre.

“We weren’t rushing to get out and gig: we were forced to sit down and write,” Shane explains.

Above all, 2020 brought Big Dog closer: the five bandmates unable to meet all at once for months on end but, determined to play together, welcoming members back into the fold at every practise. It’s the sheer joy of being able to play together again that shivers at the core of these songs. As Sam relates, readying songs for the studio was as much a process of nurturing closeness as it was a creative enterprise.

“I nearly cried the first time all five of us got to get together in a room after lockdown,” Netta recalls. “For a while we could only have rehearsals with four band members and not five. Although it was actually weirdly helpful, because when the absent person wasn’t there, there was a hole there. It made you realise how much they bring to the music, rather than being engrossed in your own part and not listening to each other.”

Those holes gave space and air to a string of expansive new Big Dog songs—Netta feverishly penning lyrics in the wasteland, and affording the band ample opportunity to break them down and incubate them. It was this crucible that imparted so much immediacy to recent additions to Big Dog’s enviable repertoire.

“What excited me to begin with was that it was so organic,” Sam relates, “but what now excites me is just how much further we can go.”

As Mark explains, Big Dog’s guiding project is an open-ended experiment: “building layer upon layer upon layer of noise.”

It’s a methodology that lends itself to boundless creativity and experimentation, and a testament to Big Dog’s palpable closeness and mutual regard.

“All of our jams could possibly be turned into songs,” Simon relates.

Recent months have also seen a shift away from Netta’s role as Big Dog’s resident bassoonist in favour of acoustic guitar, and synth duties.

“We have a few songs that are a bit more shoegazey and a bit weirder,” Netta explains, “like ‘Snow Kids’, which Mark wrote about the mystery of the Dyatlov Pass, and bassoon kind of lends itself to the weirder songs.”

For Big Dog, the months ahead look golden.

“We want to be a live band, to hit people with that wall of sound,” Mark says.

To share a room with Big Dog is to experience five friends making joyous magic together. Like the precipitous cliff-faces of the Jamison Valley at dusk, Big Dog’s sound is particoloured, and bathed in a light both blinding and transportive. These are songs that command attention, building with unmarked ease and fluidity to so much squalling release and catharsis.