Album Review: Tigercub - 'As Blue As Indigo'
You might not necessarily recognise the name of Brighton three piece Tigercub, but you will. With their sophomore release, As Blue As Indigo, the trio announce their triumphant return and the beginning of their inevitable rise to the top.
Tigercub are one of those bands that seem bigger than they are. Not literally — frontman Jamie Hall is 7 foot tall, so actually is as big as his songwriting would suggest — but as bands go, Tigercub aren’t playing the types of venues that they should be. Because ‘As Blue As Indigo’, their sophomore release, is ridiculously good. The rage of their riffs, the melancholy lyricism, the sheer audacity of the genres and influences they’ve assimilated and sewn together, and simply the quality of this album belies a band who have been headlining stadiums for years — and with its release, that’s sure to come.
And it took off, bagging record deals left and right, playing around the world, and at one point becoming Hype Machine’s most blogged about artist.
But rather than resting on his laurels, Jamie decided to use these new experiences to further Tigercub, and I consider myself luck that he did. A crawling blend of Queens of the Stone Age, Muse, Jeff Buckley, and a spattering of other musical legends, As Blue As Indigo is everything you could want from a band emerging back into the limelight, full of raging potential.
As Blue As Indigo" was sparked by colour theory and the notion that what each human eye sees as colour could be totally subjective. That idea led him to explore his own personal issues through a similar prism, exploring topics including anxiety, depression, toxic masculinity, the death of his grandmother and the recent suicide of a close friend; and in turn began spinning the lyrical thread that ties the entire record together.
Based on the idea of colour theory — the idea that colour is an inherently subjective medium — Jamie uses this offering to explore his own personal issues in the same way, with the ideas being both depressingly intimate and painfully personal. Exploring topics such as anxiety, depression, toxic masculinity and loss, As Blue As Indigo is delicately deals with some difficult themes and yet handles them effortlessly.
Yet, for all of this, As Blue As Indigo starts off inconspicuously. The opening track is a slow, meandering affair, almost languishing in its gentle self-indulgence. The beautifully haunting vocals perfectly blend with the ever-so-slightly insidious instrumentals, and embody the slight sense of wrongness in the lyrics: ‘Time is only measured by the length of your life’, Jamie professes. Still, the song sounds menacingly harmonious. Until it suddenly doesn’t, drawing in on itself and erupting into a glorious cacophony of sound that sets the scene for the next nine songs.
There’s the disconnected Beauty, feeling trapped in a web of isolation, hanged in a ‘noose of self control’; there’s the Blues-tinged ‘As Long As You’re Next To Me’, with its lilting vocals drowning in the thunderous instrumental bridge; there’s the anthemic headbanger ‘Stop Beating On My Heart (Like A Bass Drum), with its dark, beat heavy chorus, invoking the same sense of anxiety in the listener as it seems to have been written from. Meanwhile Blue Mist In My Head, a song based on being trapped in your depression and anxieties, perfectly balances the light and the darkness, with the worlds seeming to collide in this one track.
But it’s in the more contemplative moments that the album really shines. ‘Funeral’, for instance, sees Jamie come to term to loss in his life, refusing to let the loved one go yet struggling to move on himself. Transcendent strings give the track an almost celestial feeling, as if on a eulogy, while the fake-outs from previous songs’ contrast gives the track a sense of significance and importance not necessarily seen elsewhere on the record — and the emotion on display is heartbreaking.
This is a tremendous album. Simple as that. Go listen.
Words by James O’Sullivan