Considering that Mica Levi's incarnations as a composer, producer, and bandmember sound wildly different from each other, it was difficult to predict where their first album under their own name would fall on their musical spectrum. Like Levi's previous output, Ruff Dog is another example of just how willing they are to subvert expectations. Self-released and unapologetically insular, the album's sludgy, guitar-driven mood pieces come closest to Levi's work with Good Sad Happy Bad, the band formerly known as Micachu the Shapes. That group's fourth album, Shades, appeared just a couple of months prior to Ruff Dog, and its elliptical but undeniably catchy songs give the impression that much of the formlessness of their earlier albums made its way into Levi's solo material. At first, Ruff Dog's distortion and chaos feel like an equal and opposite reaction to the precision of Levi's work as a composer. Eventually, though, it becomes apparent that they use the album's lo-fi palette as artfully and specifically as the sound design and arrangements on any of their more seemingly poised music. There's a sense of overwhelm to pieces like "Wings," where Levi's sweet-and-sour voice (which was largely missing on Shades) is submerged in a fuzzy glow that's oddly pleasing in its indistinctness. Ruff Dog's blobby ambiguity calls to mind Rorschach tests or dreams, especially on "Cold Eyes" and "A plain clothed Jimi Hendrix drives me to Newcastle. For some reason the trip will take 3 days and he is going to do it for £150. He drives really smoothly and only listens to one album which is by someone with Joy in their name. Joy's music is covers of classic rock songs but with all the edge smoothed off. We arrive in Brazil and I impress someone because I say obrigado. The same person asks me to find them an intern. I don't think I can but I try. I am nervous in the girls changing room and play trap songs loud off my phone," a song with a title that resembles a dream journal entry and takes almost as long to read as it does to hear. Like Du Blonde, whose radical deconstruction of grunge comes to mind on "One Tear," Levi excels at conveying subtle moods with the amps cranked up. Even when spiky keyboards add a little more structure to "Chains Baggy," the overall effect of Ruff Dog is surprisingly intimate, as if it's just Levi and the listener underneath its challenging and comforting blankets of noise. ~ Heather Phares, Rovi

1		Ruff Dog
2		Kind of Strange
3		Wings
4		One Tear
5		Cold Eyes
6		Flower Bed
7		A plain clothed Jimi Hendrix drives me to Newcastle. For some reason the
8		Chains Baggy
9		Hi Gene
10		Pain
11		Ride Till We Die

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