EP
Tigercub
Evolve or Die
September 29 2017 (Alcopop! Records)
7.5/10
Words: Ellie Ward
After debut album 'Abstract Figures In The Dark', this new four-track EP from Brighton trio Tigercub sees them departing evermore from the primal grunge outpourings of their early days, and straying into synth terrority which we were first given an inkling of on the album.
The EP apparently drawing thematically on Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges' allegorical short story, ‘The Library of Babel’ - an image of a page from one of its imagined books provides the EP artwork - whose plot is set in a universe in the form of a vast library which consists of an enormous expanse of hexagonal rooms containing the bare necessities for human survival. Though the order and content of the books on the shelves is random and apparently completely meaningless, the inhabitants believe that the books contain every possible ordering of just 25 basic characters (22 letters, the period, the comma, and the space).
If that all sounds a bit too complex and over your head (vocalist/guitarist Jamie Hall has further described how the book "opens up the question of determinism for me. Do we have autonomy over our own lives? I get that feeling with rock music sometimes, that it already contains all the possible combinations. To break out of that and create your own autonomy in a world that’s already been determined for you hits to the heart of what drives me to write songs – they compel me as an artist, these types of interesting philosophical questions"), the actual music is a lot more accessible.
Opening on the most abrasive of tracks, ‘The Divided States of Us’, this is the hurtling express train of the EP, traversing distortion, sharp beats and static fuzz. ‘Into The Ashes’ follows a similar track on distortion, yet in a less strident way, lightened by layered textures and drums, and is perhaps the song that most reveals itself after several hearings, and Hall's vocal here starts to show its softer tones.
After the straight in, full on start of the first two tracks, 'It's Only Love' comes over all melodic and romantic showing a lighter side to these three and bringing in big chords, Mellotron and pad synths. This could almost ve another band. Not unwelcome, however. Closer 'Faking Laughter', drawing almost clear cut line between the two halves of the record, revels in lines such as, “take my tears and turn them into waterfalls of cotton candy”, while its samples and jangly cross rhythms uphold a quasi-psych appeal.
'Evolve or Die', therefore, seems to be more than just a loosely conjured record title, but more a way of how they see the way forward and of the Tigercub transition process. Where they move onto next remains to be seen and heard
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