Sync: Tiger Choir's Young Loving In New Ford Territory TVC

Posted: 14 June, 2011

It's been a big six months for Tasmanian experimental pop wunderkinds Tiger Choir. Beginning with slots on the Falls and Campus a Low Hum festivals, the trio went on to support the likes of Deerhunter and The Drums, drawing superlatives from all who saw them; in April, the band released their much anticipated debut lp, Unicycles.

Now the band's music is being beamed into living rooms around the country, with one of their tracks featuring in a new Ford Territory TV commercial. The ad, which you can watch below, features Tiger Choir's 'Young Loving', from their awesome self-titled debut ep. Tiger Choir is out now on iTunes via Gaga Digi.

The Tiger Choir story begins a couple of years ago, when three friends began experimenting with pop amid tangles of instrument cables, furniture and musical equipment in cramped sharehouses. Together, the three––Sam Nicholson, Hamish Cruickshank and Elliot Taylor––lit upon a precise, dynamic, inventive brand of pop that quickly brought the band to wider notice, first in their hometown, and then on the mainland and beyond.

Shows around Australia soon followed, with fellow free spirits Rat vs Possum and Richard In Your Mind, with the band finding time in between to write and record their debut ep. Tiger Choir's self-titled ep amply showcased the trio's unpredictable, combustible sound, which manages the feat of being at once experimental and otherworldly while remaining completely immediate––inspired dream pop played with math-rock precision. Listen to a few tracks below.

Next up was Unicycles. To record their debut lp, the band headed down to the wilds of Bruny Island, south east of Hobart, where, in between bouts of recording, the three holed up at an isolated shack and tried their hand, variously, at foraging for food, rowing back to the mainland on a boat with broken oars, and drinking.

'It was an invaluable experience in pop survivalism,' Nicholson told The Mercury. 'We forgot a bag of studio gear and had to make several compromises in the recording setup. We went foraging for food and got a bunch of mussels and made delicious shellfish pasta.'

Eventually the trio returned to Hobart, where they completed the album. Featuring the gloriously woozy dreamhop single 'Dancer', Unicycles is a remarkable slice of energetic, mercurial, intelligent pop––bright and nimble and alive, informed by the luminaries of experimental pop while remaining entirely its own beast.

'Layering lazily half yelled group vocals above rolling, satisfyingly punchy live drums and surrounding the lot with loose guitars and electronics, Tiger Choir's Unicycles is another consistently solid step into dreamy, cotton wool pop,' Who The Hell wrote of the lp.

What happens next with Tiger Choir is anyone's guess. 'For our next album we're definitely thinking of doing a similar thing,' Taylor says. 'Maybe we'll go somewhere in Tasmania; we're somewhat interested in going to the West Coast to see what sounds that brings out. Or maybe go overseas to Papua New Guinea or New Zealand or maybe even India. You need to be nomadic and adaptable to be a pop survivalist.'

Pete : 14 June, 2011

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