ROE’s LOST DOG! starts from the kind of grief that sneaks into the shape of your day. Not the grand cinematic version, but the missing noise at the door, the empty bit of routine, the photo that suddenly hurts to look at.
Across nine tracks, that loss gets tangled up with heartbreak, change and the awkward business of becoming whoever you are next. ‘New Year, New Me’ and ‘Team Player’ have bite, while ‘The Moment’s Gone’ and ‘Adrenaline’ sit closer to the ache underneath it all. The lovely ‘Dogs (interlude)’ makes the album’s central absence impossible to ignore without labouring the point.
What I like most is that LOST DOG! never turns grief into a lesson. There’s no neat “everything happens for a reason” ending waiting round the corner. ROE just lets loss, anger, humour and forward motion exist in the same room.
And somehow, by the end, there’s a puppy chasing wasps.