Tigercity: Our ‘09 Pop State of Mind: An Album Review
Will 2008-9 be looked back on as the years that indie rock got good at writing pop music? Considering songs like ‘Two Weeks’ by Grizzly Bear and ‘Stillness Is The Move’ by The Dirty Projectors, the perfect summer album (to these ears) Phoenix released, and oh yeah, MGMT, it’s not a hard argument to make. If so, then Tigercity will be joining some pretty esteemed company when they release their first LP, “Ancient Lover,” later this fall.
The comparisons to bands like Hall & Oates, BeeGee’s, or Prince are inevitable, but “Ancient Lover” opens up with a falsetto-ed set of pop-eyed tunes that after one listen are unmistakably Tigercity’s own. The first song on the album and first single, “Fake Gold” has been heating up recession friendly house parties all summer long. It’s burning, slow motion stomp, highlighted with Joel Ford’s taught disco bass snap, is nearly impossible to not tap some free-wheeling body part to – right up until the chorus which proclaims “It’s! Fake! Gold!” to well-placed synth stabs, that steal the thunder from any cowbell still hanging around from the early 00’s indie dance hangover.
From there, the next few songs take the same form and build tight, minimal pop jems fronted by Bill Gillim’s controlled, and frankly, perfectly pitched vocals. As the album continues, the level of fun starts charting a little lower than the first four stand outs, but that’s not to say the quality of the songs really goes down. Tigercity knows what a well-crafted song is and delivers on that promise, it’s just the mood got a little darker – or the night got a little later, everyone’s worn out from dancing and the neighbors are bombing the party with water balloons - so the crowd returns to ‘the comfort mistaken for love,’ like Gillim does in ‘Red Lips.’
‘Ancient Lover’ is hitting at the right time and could be a stand out fall album in a year where pop has been a welcome trend in the indie rock landscape. If this had come out a couple of years ago, it might have been seen as a bunch of Brooklyn dudes ironically ripping off trends from the late 70’s/ early 80’s that hadn’t been mined by their contemporaries. This would have been a shame, of course, because Tigercity has the chops to make the kind of music that fits Gillim’s range and our own ‘09 pop state of mind.
Love it. Can’t wait to check it out.