Tigercats - Mysteries

Tigercats hail from East London, but might just as easily come from North America with their brand of multi-layered pop and cross gender harmonies. They are joined on their second album Mysteries by Terry Edwards (of Tindersticks and Gallon Drunk), who provides some muted brass fanfare to the Tigercats sound. That sound is characterised by a laid back groove of bent strings plucking out winsome melodies circling around a central theme, and some understated drumming which is clearly component to the sound, in the way that Maureen Tucker used to be with The Velvet Underground.

Guitars wander around the songs on Mysteries like a breeze infiltrating and cooling a balmy space. On ‘Laura and Cesar’, steel drums are used to give a calypso flavour to the track, not dissimilar to how they were employed by the sorely underrated band Young Galaxy on Shapeshifting, an album which provides a good reference point to anyone considering giving this album a listen, although the female vocalist on Young Galaxy, Catherine McCandless has a more resonant voice than Laura Kovic.

Mysteries is a perfectly formulated and lushly produced pop album, one revealing huge potential in the songwriting abilities of Duncan Barrett. The impression is that the talent is burgeoning rather than waning. Mysteries bears a soul usually reserved for only the best pop records, but the listener has to be a positive mood due to higher than usual serotonin levels when compared to say, the bittersweet offerings of Belle & Sebastian. This is closer to the youthful offerings of The Go-Betweens or Saint Etienne.

A gift for lovers of sophisticated pop.