Last year i was lucky enough to interview The Tiger and Me as part of a university project to find out more about the amazing band continue reading...
How long has the band been together?
In its current form, one year exactly. The line-up of six came together officially in April 2010, which is when the band feels like it was properly born. Prior to this we were a folk duo, then a folk duo that also had bass and drums (the numerically ambiguous four-piece duo). We added piano accordion in late 2009 and the band’s current sound began to take shape, but it wasn’t quite right. When we added our multi-instrumentalist (and magnificently bearded axe-man) last year, the ball began to roll.
What are your inspirations as a band?
We’re inspired by the common pursuit of creating live shows that are lively and exciting, without forgoing moments of reflection and meaning. Also by the pursuit of creating records that do the same.
Collaborating inspires all of us – we live in a very musically vibrant city in Melbourne and as such are fortunate to be able to regularly collaborate with like-minded musicians and artists. We recently were part of a series called Sideshow Alley (sideshowalley.tv) that films bands playing a song in an alley somewhere in Melbourne. The concept is that you get one take and it’s all acoustic. Collaborations like this are great for creative momentum.
What other bands would you say you are similar too?
This is a difficult question to answer without getting into pretentious-land with “we’re unique”, so I think the best way to answer is with what people tell us. We’ve been compared a few times in the press to The Cat Empire. We’ve had people at shows tell us we remind them of Decemberists (we seem to get that one often). Ed Harcourt heavily influences a lot of my song writing, although by the time the tunes come out the other end of the machine they tend to move into more of a Beirut type area (Beirut the band, my songs don’t move to Lebanon).
What advice would you give to other bands trying to make it in the business?
Work very hard. Work on your song writing and your performing. Listen to and watch bands that you like and ask yourself what it is that they do well and how. Figure out what you want to do and then figure out how you’re going to do it. Then do it. I think success ‘finds’ very few bands or artists, mostly I think bands find success. Don’t sit around writing songs and expect it to just happen. It might, but it’s highly unlikely unless you do lots of other things right as well.
When can we look forward to hearing new material from you?
July 2011. We’ve spent March spending long days and nights in the studio working on the first of a series of three EPs that will be released over a twelve month period. The EPs will thematically explore the dichotomy between reality (sanity) and unreality (imaginary/madness). EP 1 will contain upbeat and manic songs (representing the illusion of control), the slower, introspective tunes will feature on EP 2 (realization of no control), and quirky pop material (currently under construction) is for EP 3 (embracing lack of control), early 2012.
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