Bunch Of Fives: Dog Years

Ahead of their new album MEGAFAUNA, out in March 2026, Newcastle’s music makers Dog Years drop their latest single, A Different Animal. Angular indie rock at its finest, driven by snappy riffs, sharp rhythms and doubled‑up harmonies. The track veers off on playful tangents, reels you back in with irresistible hooks, and sprinkles in those unexpected little moments that make it stick. A canny listen.

Here, the band talk cassettes with a bunch of fives…

I wouldn’t say that I grew up in a particularly musical household but perhaps the influences were there when I think back. My mam played me The Shadows Greatest Hits as a baby and it seemed like I was into it. (Or maybe it was gas.) We had the standard issue unplayable acoustic guitar in the loft on which my dad could plunk a few notes of some random tune or other. We had a few vinyl records at home, but it was the eighties after all so probably everybody did. There were also cassettes. My dad would get tapes made off his mate Les from work at Sellafield and we would often have them on in the car. One that stands out in my memory was the one with REM’s Automatic for the People on one side and The Shamen on the other. It was the Barbenheimer of its day.

Before I was properly ‘into’ music, I had a few tapes of my own. Chart stuff taped off the radio, a Stock, Aitken & Waterman comp as well as some of my dad’s rock tapes that I pilfered. But tapes were my mainstay throughout my teenage years as they were generally cheaper than CDs. Eventually, I had a suitcase full. Though where they all ended up who knows? CDs gradually took over and then over time I got shot of them too…

Every now and then, when I visit my mam and dad in West Cumbria, my mam will tell me she has had a ‘clear out’ of the loft and that there was some stuff there of mine. I will ill-advisedly get my hopes up. Generally, I will take my first opportunity to dump this unwanted booty in the first available bin or charity shop. However, on this occasion, fate had turned up some of my old tapes. This got me imagining I might find some treasures, romanticised in my musical memory. The main takeaway, however, was that I was seemingly incapable of putting a tape back in the box or even labelling it. It wasn’t a total bust, though there were a lot of tantalisingly empty boxes… I’ve recently got myself a refurbished Walkman on eBay and I enjoy blasting my musical time capsules whilst I walk the dog. Sounds so much better with all the hiss, crackle, crinkle and splat. Honestly! Anyway, here’s a few that I’ve loved and lost over the years…

1. Black Sabbath – Greatest Hits
Whilst we were on a family holiday somewhere or other Down South, my dad bought this for £3.99 and we played it in the car over and over. I don’t think my mam cared for it- she was more into Jim Reeves and country and western. But I loved it. I never developed into a metalhead or dabbled in the occult, but the Sabbath influence runs deep. They were masters of melodic riffs and gloomy gothic atmosphere. The ideal soundtrack to any summer vacation. My dad told me that he’d once worked behind the bar at The Tow Bar in Nethertown and that Black Sabbath had played there before they got famous. The Tow Bar was formerly some sort of asbestos prefab that had been thrown up for construction workers who were building Sellafield (then Windscale). My dad didn’t work there at the time, but Sabbath definitely played and Ozzy maintained links to the region, which probably accounts for a number of urban myths.

2. Shakin’ Stevens – The Bop Won’t Stop
The most important thing about this album is that someone saw fit to put a ZX Spectrum game at the end. So if you were just in it for the music you would be subjected to the squalling noise of the Speccy loading sounds as the finale. It’s abrasive stuff.
Was Shaky an influence? Well I like fifties stuff now, so maybe. Me and my nana used to sing Green Door so that must account for my showbiz tendencies. I did play the game once or twice. It was some sort of basic maze thing with bats. Shaky barely featured at all, disappointingly.

3. Nirvana – Outcesticide
This was a copy I had of a bootleg that one of my friends got from a stall on Whitehaven market. Nirvana had a huge impact on 13-year-old me. Hearing Smells Like Teen Spirit turned me from someone who had a few tapes to a music fan. Reading their interviews radicalised me further, turning me onto punk rock, underground arty lo-fi stuff and the Beatles. Bootlegs of obscure or unreleased stuff like this just got me thinking of what else might be out there. After Kurt Cobain died, there would be rumours of unreleased songs and titles would be bandied about that would fire my imagination. What might Clean Up Before She Comes be like? Raunchola? Beans?

4. Sonic Youth – Dirty
I was delighted when I came across this in Workington Woolworths. But when I tried to listen to it I didn’t get it at all. It sounded horrible, all out of tune. But in those olden of days where my pocket money would only buy me one or 2 albums a month I persevered with it. This was probably the gateway drug for me into alternative stuff. But, listening to it now, it’s a pretty catchy rock record. Though I don’t think my dad would like it.

5. The Beatles – The White Album
I’d wanted this for ages but double CDs were so expensive and you just couldn’t get this on double tape. Eventually I came across it in WHSmith in Carlisle. I was overjoyed. This is the album where they let it all hang out-loads of different styles crammed in. Even bits that aren’t that great! The atmosphere is unique too. Damp Sunday afternoon vibes- the sound of the teenage dream curdling. Happiness is a Warm Gun is peak cut and paste Lennon- abrasive, confronting, sexy, weird…

Apparently, cassettes are making a comeback. As a somewhat awkward and impractical person myself, the physical media revival is right up my street. It seems a shame that music takes up so little physical space in our homes these days. It’s hard to have a complete emotional connection with streaming. Home taping didn’t kill music, in the end. But perhaps streaming is lulling it into a coma. Though I’m no technophobe, I can’t help but feel that if the internet were switched off tomorrow, it would be, on the whole, for the best.