Tiger Bear Wolf – “Wolf”
Cred: Dick Howard
Tiger Bear Wolffrom Greensboro, North Carolina, bring a contagious, manic energy with the progressive proto-punk / math-tinged hard rock track “Wolf.”
“Wolf” is a hard beast to contain and put in a genre box. It definitely ticks the proto-punk boxes. We have the chaotic, manic energy that almost collapses into instrumental freakouts reminiscent of The Who or The Stooges. Then you are chicaned into the colossal struts and precision of Led Zeppelin.
The choruses soar into cigarette-lighter arcs that any prog rock band in the 1970s would have killed for… and then there is a splash of math rock that feels very Angine de Poitrine. Ordinarily, you may feel that this sounds a little inaccessible, but Tiger Bear Wolf agilely and compellingly dances the serpentine mess into something tightly wound, manageable, and magnetic.
The vocal shifts between sitting in a place that seems to feel as if it is thoroughly enjoying the controlled chaos surrounding it. Restrained yet loose, it veers into elongated tones, and then gloriously rises over the choruses to give us a soaring, almost Ian Gillan-like release.
From the band, Noah Howard elaborates on the meaning of the track: “The bad news is that you got bit by a robot werewolf, imperilling everyone you love. The good news is that for one night each month, you experience the perfect unification of your appetites and your higher purpose.
It’s compelling to see which of our parents’ musical influences stick with us, and even more so, which of those influences end up rubbing off on our friends. When Jonathan and I were rooming together in college, it was a Mose Allison record, Wild Man On The Loose if memory serves correctly, via Jonathan’s father that had a lasting impact. Allison opened a door to the world of Jazz that continues to expand my sphere of musical influence. A few years later, Jonathan and I shared a house together. This time, it was Captain Beyond that found its way into the house record rotation via Noah’s father. That first, self-titled Captain Beyond record proved to have a heavy influence on the increasingly progressive song structures of Tiger Bear Wolf. We learned so much about the ride a song can take a listener on with that record. ‘Wolf’ dutifully salutes Captain Beyond, and marches on.”
Overflowing with excellent guitar work and a special kind of feral energy, “Wolf” is taken from Tiger Bear Wolf’s third self-titled LP releasing on July 17th via Ernest Jenning Record Co. The record completes a trilogy that began decades ago.