tiger mountain

If recent world and national events have you down, we’ve got good news for you: Tiger Mountain have a new album out. It’s not going to bring peace to the Middle East, or change the electoral map – but if you feel like your head has become muddled and fuzzy lately, rest assured there’s enough divine wattage and pure oxygen here to lift anybody out of the doldrums. Tiger Mountain proceed with a compositional clarity and a faith rock and roll that is positively enlightening. This is the sound of true believers.Get Along Like A House On Fire is the name of the latest volume from the New York City quartet, and it’s a natural successor to Analog Heads Gone French, their debut. Analog Heads unfolded like a string of paper dolls – outros running into intros, the voices of guitarists Mike Jackson and Tyler Lenane (formerly of Girltoucher) overlapping and chasing each other. It was a perfect driving album –, one great singalong anthem after another on the stereo, top down and antenna up, a breeze clipping in from the ocean. It was an album that ended too fast, and one that demanded an encore.You’re holding that encore. Without losing any of the intensity and sincerity that has made Tiger Mountain a big draw in the New York club scene, Get Along Like A House On Fire expands on Analog Heads Gone French. The group has broadened their instrumental palette – the twin guitar crunch is still at the heart of most of these songs, but the band has also incorporated dizzy synthesizer, whiny melodica, and chilly electric piano into their arrangements. Bassist Dean Rispler (formerly of Murphy’s Law) plays with an increased elasticity here, stuttering and staggering through the tracks with unerring precision. Powerhouse drummer Aaron Conte (formerly of Nada Surf) has also expanded his vocabulary of beats and fills – he can be manic and hyperactive, but he can also move effortlessly from a complex verse beat to a Stax-Volt stomp, as on the bracing “Century’s Gone”.This band has always put rock and roll excitement first, and they haven’t deviated a bit from their mission. But where Analog Heads Gone French crashes in and out like a good one night stand, Get Along Like A House On Fire stops and settles in for awhile. The band slows down the pace for a few semi-acoustic ballads (“She Played Me Too”, “Good Lie Down”), and plays a bit with compositional expectation during the long and hypnotic outro to “Cut Your Darlings”. The group even stops for a forty-seven second space rock instrumental – the disorienting “Hold On To Planet Earth” – before roaring into “The Occasion”, a slice of uncompromising classic rock straight from the Kinks’ late-Seventies playbook. Best of all, Jackson and Lenane have sharpened their lyrical sensibilities. Song after song on Get Along examine ambiguous relationships from a thoughtful – and occasionally rueful – perspective.The result is an album of hooky, exuberant rock tracks that are sweet as cotton candy, but that don’t dissipate upon close inspection. The new seriousness that Tiger Mountain has adopted suits them well – it adds a gravity to the project and it encourages protracted engagement. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the decision to deepen and expand the Tiger Mountain sound has made the group’s music even more infectious than ever. Turn it up, kick back, and enjoy the ride.-Tris McCall