Tigers Jaw - Lost On You
'Lost On You' sounds like a record made by people who know exactly what they do well.
Ben Walsh and Brianna Collins have been making records together for the better part of two decades now, and 'Lost On You' - the seventh Tigers Jaw album, their first on Hopeless Records - sounds like a band balancing music with adult life: parenthood, stability and a more deliberate approach to touring, which may explain the record’s unhurried confidence.
Produced by Will Yip, whose fingerprints are all over the best emo-adjacent records of the last fifteen years, the album settles into a comfortable space between power-pop warmth and indie-rock precision, and if comfort is occasionally its limitation, it is also, more often, where its strength lies.
'It's Ok' opens; Walsh's vocal delivery is unhurried, sitting atop a guitar tone that favours clean shimmer over distortion. 'Breezer' is the track where all those comparisons to Jimmy Eat World feel most warranted. The mid-tempo drive, the emphasis on melody over aggression - it recalls 'Bleed American'-era songwriting without mimicking it directly. Walsh and Collins have always had an ear for the kind of hook that rewards patience, and this is a fine example: a song that improves with each listen.
The record's thematic backbone - conversations with past, present and future selves - gives 'Lost On You' a conceptual weight. 'Head Is Like A Sinking Stone' is one of the album's most immediate moments, its chorus surging upward against the lyrical gravity, rooted in a recurring childhood dream that finds beauty in otherwise unsettling moments.
Title-track 'Lost On You' closes proceedings, and it is the right choice for a final statement. The song builds patiently, layering instruments and voices until the final chorus arrives with a fullness that the rest of the album has been carefully withholding.
Twenty years on, 'Lost On You' sounds like a record made by people who know exactly what they do well, and, crucially, when to leave space for it to breathe.
