From a press release:
Wrapping up the first leg of their coast-to-coast U.S. tour, Tigers Jaw will return to their hometown area for a free all-ages acoustic show at Gallery of Sound in Wilkes-Barre on Saturday, April 18.
The Record Store Day celebration begins when doors (186 Mundy St., Wilkes-Barre) open at 8 a.m. to sell all kinds of special releases in limited quantities, followed by free entertainment throughout the afternoon. DJs RandySkillz and Joe Nardone Jr. will spin vinyl at 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., respectively. Live music from local artists If Kansas Had Trees, 1-800 BITCH, and Mike Quinn (Okay Paddy, And The Moneynotes) starts at 4 p.m., and Tigers Jaw will headline at 6 p.m. with a stripped-down set.
The Scranton-based indie rock band’s new full-length record, “Lost on You,” will be among the albums available to purchase on CD and vinyl in both bubblegum pink and blue, so they’ll be sticking around for a meet and greet to sign copies and take pictures with fans before getting back on the road next month with Pool Kids.
Recently released on March 27 via Hopeless Records, their seventh record and follow-up to their critically-acclaimed 2021 LP “I Won’t Care How You Remember Me” was produced/engineered by longtime collaborator Will Yip (The Menzingers, Title Fight, Turnstile, Movements) at his famed Studio 4 in Conshohocken and captures the energy and spirit of the live show the quintet – Ben Walsh (guitar, vocals), Brianna Collins (keys, vocals), Mark Lebiecki (guitar), Colin Gorman (bass), and Teddy Roberts (drums) – is known for.
The album’s exhilarating lead single, “Head Is Like a Sinking Stone,” arrived last year alongside a music video of tour footage shot by the band throughout the years and edited by Ricky Christian. Originating as a guitar riff written by their newest member Lebiecki and later completed by the band, Walsh noted the lyrics were inspired by a recurring dream from his childhood.
“When I was a kid, I had a strange recurring dream of jumping off the high dive at Nay Aug Park pool in Scranton, and after jumping in, time would just sort of freeze and I’d just be stuck there underwater,” he recalled.
“The premise was pretty terrifying, but the visual of sunshine reflecting on the ripples of water from the perspective of being beneath the surface was always kind of hauntingly beautiful. The chorus lyric sprung from a recollection of that dream and the rest followed. It serves as a kind of reminder to myself that beauty can be found in unexpected situations.”
Despite a person’s deepest desires, time only continues to move forward, slowly and incessantly. People attempt to understand the present through our conceptions of the past, and they hope to use that understanding to guide the future. These simple chronological divisions offer them a simple way to organize their lives – where they’ve been, where they are now, where they hope to be. Despite their connections, they feel disparate, always looking at one through the lens of another. On “Lost on You,” Tigers Jaw poses a much more holistic idea – everyone exists in all of these timelines at once.
With nearly five years since their last release, Walsh emphasized that the band “wanted to feel confident in the material we have and let things progress naturally.” And so they took their time finding what felt right, even though, of course, life continued on all around them. The result is a Tigers Jaw record as great as fans should expect. Songs like “Primary Colors” and “Baptized on a Redwood Drive” find the group embracing a driving midtempo similar to alt rock heroes Jimmy Eat World or Weezer, with other tracks like “Head Is Like a Sinking Stone” and “BREEZER” feeling so classic that the best reference is Tigers Jaw themselves. They sing about blades and knives, anxieties and intentions, and timeless TJ topics like two worlds and ghosts.
“The genesis of [the second single] ‘Ghost’ was a chance run-in with a person I grew up with,” Walsh explained.
“A run-in that would have been warm, welcomed, and cherished at one point in my life held no significance after the slow, steady passage of time and growing apart. The quick flash of memories with this person felt like a glimpse into a past life, or like seeing a ghost. Some people don’t stay in your life forever and that’s OK, but it’s very interesting which memories get dredged up when you see a once familiar face.”
The next single, “Primary Colors,” is a duet of lush interchanging vocals and harmonies between Walsh and Collins, complemented by a stunning video directed by Britain Weyant that mirrors the song’s bittersweet reflection on time and memory.
“‘Primary Colors’ is about being so wrapped up in the aftermath of something that it overwhelms your senses entirely, when you’re stuck somewhere between reflecting on the ‘what ifs’ and finding the resolve to move forward. We recreated that mental space in the music video as a performance space that had doorways to memories, journeying through a relationship from the very first sparks to the slow unraveling.”
These songs are portals taking listeners between different parts of the band’s life and even people’s own lives, showing them how they can understand time not as a linear narrative but as something that is all real and knowable at once. They weren’t able to get here without starting somewhere else – somewhere fans can instantly recognize and relate to. And while where they are going may still be unknown to listeners, they can see traces of it here already. It’s uncertain but true, something they are constantly grappling with as time continues to inevitably pass. But there is beauty in it if they can accept it, finding contentment in just attempting to know themselves.
As Collins sings on “Primary Colors,” “I understand it all now / It’s not supposed to make sense.”
Tigers Jaw was originally formed in 2005 by Walsh and Adam McIlwee. Characterized by unconventionally catchy songs, weaving harmonies, and timelessly relatable lyricism, the band has been organically increasing its fan base over two decades of touring and releasing music. The duo recorded “Belongs to the Dead” in 2006 using a cassette deck and cheap microphones in McIlwee’s garage, drawing heavy influence from The Microphones. Around this time, they also self-recorded “I’m on Your Side,” the “lost Tigers Jaw LP” that contained early versions of TJ songs. Soon after, they linked up with Run for Cover Records to re-release the self-titled album (originally released on CD by Scranton’s Prison Jazz Records), as well as “Two Worlds” (2010), “Charmer” (2014), and other EPs.
Following a lineup change in 2013, Tigers Jaw began touring full-time. Walsh and longtime member Collins took some time off in 2016 to write songs for a new album that became “Spin,” released in 2017 on Yip’s Black Cement Records. Their first major label release was praised by critics and cemented the group as a songwriting force, satiating longtime fans and gripping new listeners. Aptly described as the middle ground between Fleetwood Mac and Saves the Day, Tigers Jaw has managed to progress and evolve while preserving the spirit of their modest origins in the scrappy DIY Scranton punk scene.
Learn more about Collins, Tigers Jaw, and their previous album, “I Won’t Care How You Remember Me,” in Episode 204 of the NEPA Scene Podcast:
