If you were paying attention and kept following When Tigers Used To Smoke after our June review of their ‘It All Just Seems Pretend’ EP, you’d know the Birmingham group had recently dropped the summery surf pop gem ‘Gull Rocks’, a warm-hearted bop inspired by what sounds like a cracking holiday in Cornwall. With ‘Gull Rocks’ being the lead single from ‘There I Almost Am’ you may reasonably predict that surf pop is the order of the day then, but you’d be wrong, as When Tigers Used To Smoke are anything but predictable.
The Birmingham band’s third EP goes on a sojourn from the surreal to the sentimental, throughout the wide indie genre, taking in dream-pop, small little bits of funk, echoey, jangly guitar, uplifting synth, with traditional britpop songwriting, all kept in line by singer Declan Boyd’s distinctively deadpan vocals. Taking in the surging, aggrandizing melody of ‘Hesitate’, ‘What A Way’, a song The Maccabees would have loved to have penned if they were still knocking about today – replete with a lyric about the kettle being on, with the choruses remaining ginormous from the first track to the last. Striding amongst a hubbub of original sounds, that’s precisely where When Tigers Used To Smoke almost are.
‘There I Almost Am’ was released on 30th December 2022 and has been available to listen to ever since on all of the streaming services. We’ve included a link to the entire EP below:
Edge of Arcady 