--Ada Wofford
----Released 17 April 2020
Tiger Castle are a band out of Philly who have been around the scene for years and even had the honor of joining PUP on stage to play a rendition of one of their tracks. Tiger Castle gets compared to Superchunk, Dinosaur Jr., and early Weezer and while those influences are present on this EP they are not dominating. There’s much more of an atmospheric, even psychedelic quality to these tracks that the aforementioned influences simply do not employ.
Guitarist and vocalist Jon Urban’s voice reminds me of Ned’s Atomic Dustbin but at other times, such as on the track, “Rachel The Vampire” Urban sounds like Centipede Hz era Avey Tare. Even the vocal layering in this track is reminiscent of Animal Collective, which creates a fascinating juxtaposition of sound and influences.
When I first came across the name, Tiger Castle, I assumed this would be an emo band. Then the list of influences and the PUP connection and I was sure this was an emo band. But Tiger Castle are far too complicated to be confined to any one genre, let alone emo. These tracks have Baroque-pop style layers to them with plinking guitars that mimic harpsichords while ethereal vocals shimmer and shine, emulsifying the tracks into surreal little snow globes; each one with its own world. The songs shift and transform, employing a wide array of timbres and effects to create something wholly their own.
When I asked Jon Urban about the recording process for this EP he had this to say:
Tiger Castle for a while was just me recording into my iPad GarageBand. Once we began as a full band and started playing live shows, there became a difference between how we played them live and how they sounded on the old records, so we wanted to give them proper re-records to get a representative current sound for these songs.
We worked with Headroom Studios in Philly, as they had mixed our last LP, Pineapple Slasher, which we had recorded all ourselves on a Tascam digital PortaStudio. For this EP, we recorded at the Headroom the tracks that would benefit the most from studio sheen: drums, bass, basic rhythm guitar parts, and primary vocals. We practiced a ton before heading into the studio to be as efficient as we could, which I think paid off. Our drummer finished all of his parts in like three hours, including mic-testing the kit.
With Pineapple, the Headroom folks were rather impressed with the guitar tones and arrangements we captured, so after these main EP tracks were done, we were given the rough cuts to add layers using the PortaStudio: some extra guitars, analog synth, some auxiliary percussion, Omnichord, and even backing vocals from Gina in Dear Forbidden. This took about a year to complete, because we weren’t in any hurry, as Pineapple Slasher was released during that time and we were doing shows for that.
This EP consists of fresh, full-band recordings of previously released tracks and for that reason it serves as an excellent primer into the world of Tiger Castle. It’s rare that an EP manages to span such a wide range of influences and sounds yet still feel cohesive and thoughtful. This is an album that not only deserves to be listened to repeatedly but will reward the listener for doing so with each track exposing more of its layers and details over time. You can purchase the album via Band Camp here and you can listen to “Rachel the Vampire” below.
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