Tiger - We Are Puppets

Label: Trade 2
Year of Release: 1996

I must admit I had really high hopes for Tiger, and judging by their earliest music press coverage (which was largely favourable) so did a great many other critics out there with a much greater knowledge of what was "going down" than I ever had access to. As an idea alone, the band were brilliant. The ex-art student frontman Dan Laidler was almost painted as being an idiot-savant by the music press, and he freely confessed that he didn't have much interest in music at all, owned about three albums and just formed the band based on some ideas he'd barked into a tape recorder in his bedroom.

If this sounds like a slightly underwhelming prospect, it's largely believed that the introduction of guitarist Julie Sims into the equation helped to smooth over the more extreme outsider edges, and created a concoction of tunes which sounded disjointed, scruffy, and slightly naive but still very appealing in a post-punk/ krautrock way. "Race" and "On The Rose" (both featured here) are actually stunning little singles with some of the more wonderful, buzzing guitar noises and primitive pulsating rhythms you'll hear, complete with absurd, scattergun lyrics, and quirky and sudden tugs in the arrangements - it's hard for me not to pull in comparisons to early Wire in places, only unlike Elastica or Menswear, Tiger were rougher and were closer to the devil-may-care spirit of the band (and, crucially, appeared to have more tunes of their own). The main guitar riff for "Race" alone sounds like a knackered car continually trying to rev its way out of deep mud, then ends with a primitive (and presumably guitar effects pedal driven) electronic engine noise. It's all very primal and punkish sounding, but I struggle to think of many bands of that ilk who would be willing to combine it with that kind of arty imagination now.

So what went wrong, then? Primarily I would argue that Tiger both looked and sounded too unorthodox for mainstream consumption. Dan Laidler's voice frequently sounds like a protesting sealion, and (with the exception of Julie Sims, who most definitely was attractive and sported lots of tight leather stagewear) the band made an enormous virtue out of their provincial ordinariness, having their hair "styled" into mullets amongst other fashion war-crimes. Obviously, I should make it clear at this point that I have absolutely nothing against such behaviour in the world of pop, but it seldom translates into mass public appreciation, and at a time when the so-called indie scene was having an obsession with cute cover stars, it was never going to come across very well when a band attempted to pride themselves in how average looking they were.

On top of that, this album was recorded a mere year after the band formed, and the lack of variation in its style probably alienated many listeners. In fact, confession time - as a whole, I do find that it drags a little, and sounds rushed in places. Equally, Laidler's naive slogan-orientated lyrics can be either charming or just plain attention-seeking whacko, and when tracks veer towards the latter writing style it can get faintly irritating. That doesn't stop some of the tracks on here being an absolute joy to listen to, but a "lost classic" it isn't, just a rather good piece of work which deserved better than its pathetic placing of number 108 in the British charts.

One other album followed - "Rosaria", which was issued in 1999 after their record label dropped them - and that seems to have been that. A shame, but we can perhaps take some comfort from the fact that "Race" just scraped the Top Forty, a feat I can't imagine a similar single achieving in the present day.

Tracklisting:
1. My Puppet Pal
2. Shamed All Over
3. Race
4. Bollinger Farm
5. Storm Injector
6. Depot
7. On The Rose
8. Sorry Monkeys
9. Cateader Reddle
10. She's OK
11. Ray Travez
12. Keep In Touch


Download it here