Tigercub’s track-by-track guide to new album The Perfume Of Decay

Jamie Hall has described Tigercub’s new album The Perfume Of Decay like “sweet-and-salty popcorn” – it is, he says, “all about opposites”. Making their debut on Pearl Jam legend Stone Gossard’s Loosegroove records, here Jamie peels back the many interesting – and, indeed, opposing – layers of the LP…

“The definition of Dirge is a lament for the dead, a mournful piece of music. I was listening to a lot of Sunn ((O)) leading up to the recording sessions and wanted to pay a brief homage to them. Dirge is the sound of this record powering up and kicking into gear. We wanted to create a powerful sense of dread.”

“They say comparison is the thief of joy, and nowhere is this more acutely felt than on the internet; the public ledger where I must amend my social CV daily, to portray my life to others in the most rose tinted and ineffable way possible. The reality couldn't be further from the truth of course, beneath this facade I am crumbling, cascading into despair and at odds with my emotions. The Perfume Of Decay is my expression of this feeling, an argument between affectation and naturalness.”

“When Tigercub were on tour last November I was going through something incredibly dark in my life, at a show in Hannover I completely broke down, and a good friend who was part of our touring party took me to one side and said a prayer for me. It was incredibly powerful at the time and made me look at spirituality in a different way. So much of life involves having faith and being in a band is certainly about faith, historically Tigercub have taken some huge leaps of faith in our history and somehow, we’ve came out at the end of it all in one piece, someone up there must be looking after us? I guess I needed a saviour after all.”

“I realised that without music I am alone, without sounds to occupy my brain intrusive thoughts begin to swirl and unease and sadness rises within me, so play my favourite song because silence makes me feel low.”

“Home, where I wanted to be… When I was 18 I traded the North East coast for the South coast of England. I loved Brighton so much and still do to this day. I thought I would never look back however, as the years have passed, I’ve grown more and more homesick and have realised a deep yearning to reconnect with my roots in the north of England. The one constant throughout all of this has been the sea… I’m still obsessed with it. The coast is what makes me think of home and long for it, and that imagery is all over this track.”

“I must not think bad thoughts. I push the bad thoughts to the back of my mind, I keep them there in a box and leave them out of sight. I repress my feelings and power on through life until occasionally, the bad thoughts bubble up and then my anxiety all comes rushing to the surface until my head starts spinning, I blow up. The Dark Below, the pressure from the undertow.”

“This song is about wanting to be loved, and that being loved is like a drug. It’s like a hit of dopamine. Love ushers out the numbness of life and helps you to feel things again, like a sugar rush, love brings me up until I eventually crash and ultimately the insecurity and imposter syndrome kicks in and I ruin it all.”

“I’m quite a nocturnal person. When I lie in bed at night, it’s the only time really I have away from like tasks or a screen and it tends to be when a lot of my ideas come. There’s something oxymoronic about being in bed at night, it’s relaxing but also if you’re having a sleepless night, it can be this intense claustrophobic space.

“I lie awake and inspect the room around me I see a spider has got into the room and is crawling up my bed post, the next night I see the same spider doing the same thing, he only comes out at night, and I observe him every time he does, it’s so silly but eventually I feel a fondness towards him and comfort in his presence. It’s very Charlie Day, but quite a nice premise for a song I thought.

“This is an ode to Elliot Smith, its dreamlike and ethereal, I guess at this point in the record there has been a lot of despair and soul searching and to me, We’re A Long Time Gone offers some optimism and resolve to the album thematically.”

“Like a streetlight on my curtain, every night I can be certain that it hurts me, it hurts when you’re around, this song is for me what Tigercub do best, the track goes from sounding like it’s playing through a lo-fi tiny broken speaker to an epic cinematic hi-fi dynamic high.”

“I hold my breathe until I forget. This song is about memory snapshots coming back to you out of thin air. That moment when a random memory just floods back into your mind and consumes you, I just try to weather the storm and wait for it to pass.”

“A shadowgraph is a measurement that captures a difference in temperature, a different gas, or a shock wave, a gunshot in the transparent air cannot be seen by the human eye but the air from the bullet will cast shadows.

“The song is about being vulnerable in love, and how that leaves you so open, it’s like a leap of faith, and I guess there’s only one of us left with a gun and its aimed at my heart – it’s like a Mexican stand-off.”

“Infinity reaches the hammer to fall. I wanted this track to feel like the credit roll after an epic film, or that you’ve reached the shore after time spent in the wilderness of the ocean. This track I feel showcases our more experimental side, it’s syncopated and blissed out.”

The Perfume Of Decay is out now via Loosegroove Records

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