Scott McMicken doesn’t sound like a guy trying to reinvent the wheel—he just wants to make sure it’s still rolling the right way. The Dr. Dog guitarist and co-frontman spent the better part of two decades in the band’s Philadelphia bubble, writing, recording, and touring nonstop. But by the time Critical Equation came around, even McMicken knew the machine needed oiling—or maybe, less machine altogether.
“For the first time in our entire career, we decided to take a little break,” he says. “Not because things were rough—just because we could.” The “little break” turned into a two-year reset that gave the band, for once, the luxury of boredom. “Looking back, we didn’t realize how much we needed that,” McMicken says. “It gave us time to check in with ourselves, to figure out what we still loved and what wasn’t working.”
That self-reflection became the spark for Critical Equation, their first record made outside the safety net of their own studio. “We’d always recorded at home,” he says. “It was familiar, it was easy. But that’s the problem—it was too easy.” So the band left Philly for Los Angeles, teaming with producer Gus Seyffert (Beck, Norah Jones), whose knack for making weird things sound warm gave the new record its dual nature: psychedelic in feel, soulful in groove.
“Simplifying was the new frontier,” McMicken says, laughing. “We realized that the biggest risk wasn’t trying something new—it was trying to be honest.” The honesty he’s talking about isn’t just musical. It’s relational. “Being in a band for 20 years is basically marriage counseling with guitars,” he says. “You start protecting each other’s feelings instead of saying what you mean. But once we started being brutally honest—about the songs, the process, ourselves—everything lightened up. Suddenly, it was fun again.”
Fun, in this case, sounds like vintage soul discovering psychedelia all over again. Critical Equation feels like one of those early-’70s moments when R&B bands decided to stretch out, plug in, and turn on. “We wanted it to feel good,” McMicken says. “We focused on groove, swing, rhythm. That’s the soul side of it. Then Gus came in and started peeling layers back and adding this dreamy weirdness—strings, reverb, all that magic—and that’s the psychedelic part.”
The album’s lead single, “Go Out Fighting,” nails that balance—a catchy, uplifting track that also wrestles with, well, staying alive. “It started as this line running through my head: ‘Go out fighting,’” McMicken says. “At first, I thought it was fatalistic, like the ‘going out’ part meant the end. But the more I talked about it, people took it as perseverance—don’t give up. That changed the whole meaning for me.”
That’s a fitting mantra for a band that’s managed to evolve without imploding. After nearly twenty years, a handful of side projects, and a cult following that somehow still feels underground, Dr. Dog found clarity not by chasing change, but by trimming the excess. “It all comes down to being yourself,” McMicken says. “That sounds simple, but it’s hard. You spend years building this thing with your friends, trying to make it work, and suddenly you realize the best thing you can do is stop trying so hard.”
The result is a record that’s confident, loose, and alive in a way only bands with nothing left to prove can manage. As McMicken puts it, “For the first time, I’m not sure what going on tour means anymore—and that’s the point. We stripped away all the history and just did the thing because it felt good. That’s where we are now.”
When Dr. Dog hit the road again, starting with a show in Louisville’s Mercury Ballroom, the setlist pulled from across their history—some songs never played live before, others revived with a new spark. “It all feels different now,” he says. “Same band, new perspective. I guess that’s what this record’s about: being strong, simple, and still curious.”
Listen to the interview above and then check out "Go Out Fighting" and "Listening In" below!
