Tigers Jaw with Pool Kids and Bleary Eyed presented by Thalia Hall and Riot Fest
Despite our deepest desires, time only continues to move forward, slowly and incessantly. We attempt to understand the present through our conceptions of the past, and we hope to use that understanding to guide the future. These simple chronological divisions offer us a simple way to organize our lives: where weve been, where we are now, where we hope to be. Despite their connections, they feel disparate, always looking at one through the lens of another. On their new record Lost on You, the bands seventh full-length, Tigers Jaw pose a much more holistic idea: we exist in all of these timelines at once.Formed in 2005 by high school friends from Scranton, PA, Tigers Jaw have long been an important and revered band. They quickly gained attention for their ability to effectively and cooly capture teenage emotions, with equal parts upbeat angst and mellow moodiness. And now, two decades later, the band is still going. Ben Walsh (guitar, vocals) and Brianna Collins (keys, vocals), alongside the expanded lineup featuring Mark Lebiecki (guitar), Colin Gorman (bass), and Teddy Roberts (drums), continue their legacy into a new era.Lost on You is a continuation of what weve always loved about Tigers Jaw. Theres the powerful and pounding rhythm section, the great melodic leads that shift from instrument to instrument, and, as always, the interchanging and overlapping vocals. With five years since their last release, Walsh noted that the band wanted to feel confident in the material we have and let things progress naturally. And so they took their time finding what felt right, even though, of course, life continued on all around them. They reunited with producer and engineer Will Yip (Turnstile, Movements) at his famed Studio 4 in Pennsylvania to capture this moment, this solid and yet very strange period of middle adulthood where we are supposed to have shaken off the uncertainty of adolescence and yet are still plagued by many of the same problems.The result is a Tigers Jaw record as great as youd expect. Songs like Primary Colors and Baptized on a Redwood Drive find the band embracing a driving midtempo similar to alt rock heroes Jimmy Eat World or Weezer, with other tracks like Head is Like a Sinking Stone and BREEZER feeling so classic that the best reference is Tigers Jaw themselves. They sing about blades and knives, anxieties and intentions, and timeless TJ topics like two worlds and ghosts.And while this record is decidedly from the present, it is deeply embedded in their history. There are many moments that would feel just as at home sung along to at the defunct Scranton venue Test Pattern as they would in the huge halls of Philadelphias Union Transfer, a venue probably ten-times as large that they are now able to sell out. This is not surprising. The scenes present moment owes a lot to Tigers Jaw; their contributions have helped pave the way for this entire world, and still the group continues on.
Rock
Music
