How hīkoi between Ōtepoti and Tāmaki Makaurau defines Office Dog

FEATURE | ISSUE THIRTEEN | SPOOKY

Written by Liam Hansen (they/them) | @liamhanse.n |  Associate Editor

The decennial cyclical nature of pop culture is currently throwing everything back to the late 2010s, when New Zealand indie was having an international renaissance. Within a few years, several Aotearoa bands broke across the Pacific Ocean, signing with major Stateside record labels and gaining genuine virality on their songs and music videos before the term was co-opted by the songs’ usage in TikToks. Princess Chelsea exploded on music blogs with ‘The Cigarette Duet’ before riding into the next generation with a stellar 2020s so far, Fazerdaze took Morningside from Tāmaki Makaurau to the rest of the world, and smack bang in the middle of it all was a young Kane Strang, signing to Dead Oceans and seeing his self-loathing 2017 exodus, ‘Two Hearts and No Brain’, take on millions more eyes than he ever could have imagined. 

Kane and I are outside of a pub in Ponsonby that I used to walk by daily while immersing myself in Office Dog’s 2023 debut record, Spiel, after the three-piece slowly trickled out singles that were immediately chucked onto student radio playlists of the era.

Hailing from Ōtepoti Dunedin, Kane Strang began writing music across various bands and names toward the end of high school, with various blogs in the early 2010s praising early demos that have since been scrubbed from his bandcamp page. Across these tracks, many of which were re-recorded for his later albums and EPs, Strang tears his Two Hearts and No Brain out for the world to see, at a time where that looked like a few faceless people on the internet that you’d never meet. “There’s no way in the world when I wrote some of those, essentially my biggest solo songs, thought they’d have millions of streams.” The best example of this is ‘My Smile Is Extinct’, which has a music video with close to ten million views and hundreds of comments from American yuppies lamenting the passage of time. 

Early Bandcamp recognition saw Strang’s solo project signed to Dead Oceans, who rolled out the most balls to the wall international campaign for the Phoebe Bridgers album a few weeks ago and gave Kane a not-quite-planetarium-level-but-still-quite-good treatment. 

Despite successful and fulfilling tours after Two Hearts released, Kane got stuck in a rut. “I went through this big experience and then was spat out on the other side very suddenly, and it took a while to work through that.” The start of 2021 saw the release of the solo LP ‘Happy To Perform’ and its successive tour, accompanied by a supergroup of Peter Ruddel of Wax Chattels and Sulfate, Leith Towers of Marlins Dreaming and Ringlets, Gussie Larkin of Mermaidens and Earth Tongue, and Mitchell Innes – a childhood friend of Kane’s from Ōtepoti he managed to lock down on drums for a new project to take shape. 

“I just knew I wanted to do something that was quite strict and relied on me to write more interesting songs at their core. It also forced me to get a bit better at guitar again and learn some new things – it definitely completely changed how I play guitar, forming this band.” 

There are a few key locations that host much of the mythos of Office Dog. Early on, they’d practice between Raz and Kane’s flat in South Auckland and the basement of a church in Mt Eden. Just as much as the band is stuck up north, its roots remain in Otago. For Kane, those roots have been dragging him back year after year, finding himself relocating between the two cities constantly for various work and family priorities while writing new material for the band. 

The timing lined up for their old mate De Stevens to start working at Roundhead during a stint where all band members were in Auckland, allowing them to squeeze in two days at the studio while De was still learning the ropes. The initial tracking of the record was quick to a point of haste, but after some distance, they went back in at the late hours after Night Lunch producer Stephen Marr finished up their sessions, adding overdubs and re-recording various vocal and guitar parts. “Genuinely every vocal take on that album was recorded after 11 pm. I think Raz had some kind of strep throat or something when we were recording. We were hanging on by fucking threads in every way.”

The consequences of the long commutes were reaching their breaking point, as a split life between two cities couldn’t be tolerated any further. “It’s a running joke, and it’s kind of what Prime Corner is about. I’ve just lived in this really unsettled way for the last few years, never being able to make my mind up about where I want to be. That caught up with me after a while.” 

Prime Corner was released with urgency, being celebrated with a tour around the motu in September with an extended lineup and slots across Great Sounds Great. Their Tāmaki Makaurau show at Double Whammy took the crowd to the floor, after NZ fans waited months to hear these songs live. From here, it’s unclear whether we’ll get another Office Dog album asap or more solo experiments, like Kane’s new project More Blue Noise. Either way, we aren’t going to escape Office Dog any time soon. 

This piece was initially published on misheard.co.nz. Our associate editor and former Editor-in-Chief, Liam, is sharing thoughts, interviews, and announcements dedicated to Aotearoa music –  if you’re interested, head to their website and subscribe to the newsletter.