It's been a long time coming: Tigercub's volatile release schedule is full of gems, but none shine brighter than 'As Blue As Indigo', bringing a new lev...
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It's been a long time coming: Tigercub's volatile release schedule is full of gems, but none shine brighter than 'As Blue As Indigo', bringing a new level of intricacy and tenderness to their roaring rock'n'roll sound. Thankfully, fans are still rearing and ready to pounce upon this new offering.
"The people who like Tigercub, really fucking like Tigercub," frontman and songwriter Jamie Hall announces proudly. "What our fanbase lacks in numbers, they make up for in passion." After considering who it is actually sustaining their creative endeavours, he reveals that, to him, these supporters are "a collection of weird, queer, non-fitting-in but still cool-as-hell people. We're not too cool or popular to hang with these people and have a good time, either; every time someone interacts with the band, that's an opportunity for me to make another friend!"
If the audience fuelling this alt-rock outfit is a bunch of oddballs, Jamie himself really is the kingpin. "I'm essentially a rock'n'roll clown," he happily confirms. "Mullet, porno tache, 7 foot tall… I learnt from a young age that I just don't fit in. Acceptance is a beautiful thing, albeit it a lifelong task - it's all about the way you brand yourself and take advantage of your weirdness; sell it!"
Selling vulnerabilities has become a theme across Tigercub's second full-length release in a seven-year career, and this approach stands out from their discography by allowing deeper and more personal moments to manifest across the 10 tracks.
Jamie explains: "On the first record, some of the topics and themes in the songs almost seemed like a newspaper headline; they were just political and weren't much about me. It doesn't make the songs shit; they were relevant to the artist I was at the time, but now I'm more selfish – I want to talk about myself. I'm opening up and processing my own emotions, and when you do that, when you put your emotions, and true self, on the table and then someone turns around and says it's bad… that's horrible, it's a big risk. That can seriously damage you, so I always shied away from it before."
The confidence to unfold internal woes into angsty lyrics and dynamic sounds is something instilled in Jamie not through Tigercub itself, but actually an experiment-turned-side-project exploring bipolar themes in a warped psychedelic album fittingly titled 'The Seven Foot Tall Post-Suicidal Feel Good Blues' (no, it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue).
Clarifying the inspiration behind this sonic side-step, he unveils a history of bullying based on the fact that schoolboys thought he was "essentially acting gay, amongst other things. 'Nancy boy' was something that got shouted at me a lot, so naming the project Nancy was a way of reclaiming ownership of that word and finding strength in it. Ironically, it was initially faceless and sexless; I just wanted to see how the industry would respond to something that has zero context. It went pretty crazily well, and ultimately, I leaked out with the formative steps towards revealing myself as a creative truly being himself, not keeping anything hidden emotionally. Opening myself up did set me on the path of self-discovery, which I then dragged into the 'As Blue As Indigo' writing sessions."
This cliché undeniably carries some truth, and it's this truth that manifests in some dark lyrical narratives. These moments needed time to be fully understood and appreciated, something the group had in abundance following their unintentionally extended break after 2017's 'Evolve or Die' EP. This step away stemmed from a weariness of constant self-marketing, an aspect of the music world that is far more involved than fans can comprehend.
"As an artist, you can feel the fatigue setting in. People can only be interested in what you're selling for so long – I don't want to put it in such a mercenary way by defining us as a product, but that's the vocabulary you adopt in this industry. When the band was active pre-2018, that's what I was feeling – not only the fatigue of fans, but of us as well; the creative output felt like diminishing returns. So, we took a break– we planned on six months off, and that essentially turned into like three years."
"I'm essentially a rock'n'roll clown. Mullet, porno tache, 7 foot tall…"
Tigercub
The trio have not been completely inactive in that period, though, with the aforementioned side-project taking the forefront, in addition to the 'Repressed Semantics' EP in 2020. It was lead single 'Stop Beating on My Heart (Like a Bass Drum)' that really displayed the group back in their element, and this was a song that took fans by surprise in the best possible way – the band really did choose a great moment to reinstate their glory.
"Enough time had passed while writing the record that I felt the concept of 'As Blue As Indigo' and the exploration of my own sadness was strong enough to make a return. Not to be too depressing, but that's a part of life, a part of being an adult," Jamie divulges. "You're happy, you're jovial, but you also get sad, and that melancholy is an intrinsic part of life. You have to embrace these things. I use music to express that side of my being, and it helps me process it in a cathartic way."
The concept of the record itself is an individualistic investigation into human experiences of sadness and grief, which is a loose theme acting as a lens for music that analyses those despairing moments in a constructive manner. As the chief songwriter here admits, "even the title is deliberately vague; on the colour spectrum, between blue and indigo, you can't really tell which is which. I look deep into that because, in life, we're taught that things are good or bad and there's no in-between, whereas really life is just a series of grey areas. A lot of films go to great lengths to portray those ambiguities, and they're all relative to how you interpret them - there's no monolithic answer. I think that's why people like football so much… it's empirical, it's binary, you know what you're getting. Life is not that, it's a mystery, and I don't understand it."
Tigercub have never been afraid to dive deep into those things they aren't necessarily comfortable with yet for the greater good of their listeners. This pursuit of the genre's most extreme capabilities is something that drives the band and is, in turn, appreciated by their attentive fanbase.
Jamie praises inventive music as an essential virtue. "The most important thing is for new music listeners to be exposed to stuff that's going to lead them down a pathway to even more interesting music and open them up to better ideas – for me, that's the aim of the game here. By listening in the first place, you've been better trained to perceive even more subversive art forms. Experimental music is a force of good in the world because it's like an education, which makes the world and the people in it better."
Educational tools are best delivered in a trojan horse of dirty riffs and driving percussion, which is a staple of the alt-rock niche adopted with this project; exercising the eardrums has never felt this good, and kicking the best sounds out of three years in the studio has elevated the glass ceiling that will be shattered regardless. Much of this record draws you in with whisper-quiet verses that show a mastery of dynamics by gradually building tension and unexpectedly imploding with all the belligerence you could wish for; this shock factor is something that was deliberately and painstakingly crafted.
"I wanted something that was crushingly heavy and balls to the wall, no apologies. Make it exciting, make it bigger than anything else, and distort the fucker. That was my overarching input: turn it up to 11," Jamie roars excitedly. "That's where rock music should live - it should be outrageous, it should be wrong and break all the fucking rules…. Rock music should have energy; it should leap out at you and directly attack you. Apologies to our fans - you're going to have to invoice us for your blown-out speakers."
Taken from the July issue of Upset. Tigercub's album 'As Blue As Indigo' is out 18th June.
