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Oct 02, 2019 By Christopher Roberts that dog.

Alt-rockers from the 1990s, that dog. are releasing their first new album in 22 years, Old LP, this Friday via UMe. Now they have shared another song from it, “Just the Way,” via an amusing video that spoofs the 1970s sitcom Three’s Company, with the band as the main trio of roommates and guest stars Jack Black and Maya Rudolph as their neighbors The Gropers (as opposed to The Ropers in the original show). The video premiered on Funny or Die and you can watch it below.

Casey Storm directed the video. Storm is a noted director of commercials but was previously a costume designer who worked extensively with Spike Jonze on his music videos (including Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” and Weezer’s “Buddy Holly”) and films (such as Being John Malkovich, Where the Wild Things Are, and Her), as well as working on David Fincher’s Zodiac.

Previously that dog. shared Old LP‘s first single, “If You Just Didn’t Do It,” which was one of our Songs of the Week.

Anna Waronker, Rachel Haden, Petra Haden, and Tony Maxwell formed that dog. in 1991 and released their self-titled debut album in the U.S. in March 1994 via DGC (it actually came out in England in December 1993 via 4AD). The band went on to release two more albums, 1995’s Totally Crushed Out! and 1997’s Retreat from the Sun, before calling it quits later in 1997. That dog. reformed in 2011 for some shows and now they are back as a trio; Petra Haden has opted not to take part in.

“By the end of 2012 we had four songs done,” said Waronker in a previous press release. “In 2013, we had a few more. We needed time to let it grow into what it would become. Sometimes it’s hard to get there. Which is kind of the theme of the album.”

The album also features the following guests: Maya Rudolph, Randy Newman, Graham Coxon (Blur), Josh Klinghoffer (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Charlotte Caffey (The Go-Go’s), Tanya Haden (The Haden Sisters), violinist Kaitlin Wolfberg, Andrew Dost (fun.), and Steve McDonald (Redd Kross).

The previous press release describes the album as such: “Across its eleven songs, Old LP is full of all the sounds that made that dog. one of the most amazing bands of their time, including interlocking vocal melodies, hooks-on-hooks, sweet orchestration, and Anna Waronker’s signature guitar tuning. There’s the unshakeable tension between sweetness and dissonance, between dark and light, between life-or-death seriousness and tongue-in-cheek wordplay. But with two decades of life experience behind them, the dynamics of that dog. are now notably more stark and sophisticated, layered and multi-dimensional.”

The band’s self-titled debut album got a deluxe 25th anniversary digital reissue in July. It included four rarities originally released on 7-inch and prior to its release they shared one of those, “Buy Me Flowers.”

that dog. Tour Dates:

11/16 - Los Angeles @ The Regent
11/23 - Brooklyn @ Warsaw

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