The Wedding Present - Watusi

You can't swing a dead cat in a room full of aging hipsters without lashing someone who owns a copy of Seamonsters.  With good reason.  What I don't get is why more people don't also adore the follow up, Watusi.  

Lyrically, it continues the usual themes of unrequited love and narcissistic heartbreak.  Musically, however, the band built on the shredding guitar template and adopted a somewhat more diverse sonic palette.  Recording with Steve Fisk may have helped.  Listen to Fisk's contemporary project Pell Mell (posted yesterday, here) and you may hear what I mean.  

It's difficult to find this album in any format right now.  It is not for sale at any of the major mp3 stores. I could not even find it posted on another blog.  Hopefully, Island Records will not hammer me as hard as they did Negativeland.  Enjoy!

they can keep it all

Tiger - Shining in the Wood EP

From 2000-2003 I lived with a couple friends in their big old house in the Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pittsburgh.  One of them really loved this CD.  I got it onto my hard drive pretty soon after I heard it.  It's an EP released in America by Bar/None records, featuring the "Shining in the Wood" British single plus the B-sides from two other British-only singles.  

Judging by the dearth of information online, it seems like this is just one more band of which find memories live on among the relative few. That's too bad.  Anyone who enjoyed the Pixies' guitar buzz, the retro-analog groove of Stereolab, and th' faith healers' poppy streak probably would have been ga-ga about Tiger.  

I haven't found anything else in the blogopolis, so if you have some other Tiger records please share the wealth, eh?  

one of us