185. Tigercub

Scala

18 January 2018

Last year Tigercub had produced a gig so surprising, not least because of the remarkable facial hair of the bassist, that a repeat session was always on the cards. We had caught them at Dingwalls and, on the strength of that gig, two friends and I trekked to the Scala, perched on the intersection of Kings Cross’ once sleazy red-light panhandle.

Frontman Jamie Hall, hair falling across his face like a grunge curtain, stood centre-stage, looking every inch the reluctant herald of Brighton’s darker rock impulses. To his left lurked the bassist, a man with that moustache, so heroic it deserved its own film franchise. It was a Tracy Pew–grade monument, an image that was reinforced by his bass slung low enough to qualify as sub-surface drilling equipment.

There’s no doubting Tigercub’s musicianship, they’re tight, talented, and capable of conjuring genuine menace from a three-piece setup. The problem is that after about twenty minutes, the menace starts to sound all a bit compressed into one long sonic assault. The songs blur into one another, a relentless barrage of hammering fuzz.

Part of this is the Scala’s acoustics, a soup of distortion that merged into an unholy racket, cranked so high that it left me wondering whether the sound engineer had perhaps suffered a head injury during soundcheck.

And yet, despite this chaos, Tigercub remain an oddly compelling proposition. There’s something about their sheer conviction that drags you along. When the bassist locks into his Tracy Pew death-wiggle, you can’t help but grin through the noise. They’re thrilling and a bit ridiculous, but a band that has a core of excellent musicianship. However, you are left with a feeling that, with some evolution in their songcraft, they might produce something genuinely excellent, right now though they need to get their sound sorted.