The Tigers have some friends in the right places. Or a deft hand in
searching out email addresses. Or, just possibly, a killer catalogue
of music. I say this in light of the names who cut, pasted and
generally screwed with the band's material on their previous
full-length, Remixes: Papa M (Dave Pajo), Guided by Voices
(Doug Gillard) and others.
And in one of those proficient moves that reviewers like to pull,
I'll now declare that if Papa M and Guided by Voices were two
metropolises on opposing sides of a world map, say, for the sake of
spatial equilibrium, Johannesburg and Buenos Aires, you'd find
Western Australia's The Tigers as the flourishing rural town in
between. Utilizing some of the guitar-interplay smarts and rhythmic
shifts of Papa M and Slint, The Tigers temper that sound with a pop
edge that's not quite as classic-rock hook-laden as Guided by Voices,
but still offers the best most indie bands can muster: memorable
little guitar bits and witty lyrics.
The title of opener "There Are So Many Stupid People in This World"
will give you some idea of the not-so-earnest yet still serious songs
included here. The track uses the tension-build-release model to
perfect effect, starting with a drumless trot and working up to a
powerful gallop at its climax. It begins slowly as guitars are
delicately finger-picked, playing the song's first melody as Chris
Cobilis sings "I feel like I could explode at any given moment/ All
over, all over the pavement" with an air of resignation before
building to a layered and loose climax. The drums drop away again as
Cobilis offers "I feel like a teenager all over again/ So much that I
could explode" before the song's first-half structure is repeated
again, this time with an even bigger climax as Cobilis cries out the
track's title. It's loose, fun and serious — all at the same
time.
Elsewhere The Tigers indulge in a vocal turn that is decidedly emo
styled ("Slayer Bells") — one guy screams while the other guy
sings — although the music is thankfully more reminiscent of the
Birthday Party, Calexico and Sonic Youth than, say, Thursday. The
sombre guitar-picking, chiming vibraphone and low-key drumming of
"Fletch" suggest Chicago-inspired acts such as the Mercury Program,
while the trumpet's bandleader turn and quick drumming of "Fatality"
conjures Doug Scharin's dub project HiM, before it dips into the
murky world of atonal dirge that bands such as The Boom have done
from time to time.
With so many reference points, it may sound like The Tigers are a
derivative antipodean outpost, a clearinghouse for all that Chicago
and New York offered a few years back. But the primary difference
here is that while the U.S. acts were stop-on-a-dime tight and fueled
by a certain tension, The Tigers are loose and seem like the gangly,
ungainly brother of that Chicago scene. They're by no means worse for
this — indeed the looseness provides a whole other kind of
tension which seems to come from the Birthday Party lineage of a
portentous "stand back, this shit could blow up at any minute" style:
chaos, calamity and unsteadiness. There are wrong notes, guitars that
slip out of key — even ideas that don't quite work — yet
all these elements pull together to create a whole that is entirely
satisfying and engaging, for it doesn't trade purely on genre
conventions, expectations and boundaries. And that's not just some
colonial "encouragement award" (you know, "it's good, for an
Australian band"). This record can breathe fresh and needed air into
the worldwide guitar-based post-rock field, and maybe even the
straight-up, no-frills rock field as well.
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