Good Tiger are not a metal band.
While there are guitars and screaming, there are also overtones of prog, math-rock and even pop on_ A Head Full Of Moonlight_, and the single Snake Oil is undoubtedly the heaviest track. There’s a mix of Everything Everything’s bouncy art-pop and Mars Volta’s complexity on opener Where Are The Birds, with Elliot Coleman’s high vocal tones reminiscent of Cedric Bixler-Zavala.
He slides his words out slowly as if swilling a fine wine, and it only gets weirder. Enjoy The Rain pairs a guitar line played at breakneck speed with climbing vocals, while Paint What I See, the tale of a deranged painter, conveys insanity with discordant vocal scales and odd tempos. But beyond the sexy, muted breakdowns of Aspirations, the band start to lose their way.
Understanding Silence, the album’s one slow song, is a little directionless melody-wise, and ’67 Pontiac Firebird is a forgettable closer rather than the roaring thrill ride the title suggests. For a debut album, it’s commendably inventive, but not inexhaustibly so.