CD review: Republic Tigers

The Republic Tigers were born in the wake of the Golden Republic, a Kansas City band that signed a big-label deal (Astralwerks) and made a good record that never reaped the rewards it deserved.

In 2006 it broke up. Free to run his own show, Kenn Jankowski hooked up with friend and collaborator Adam McGill and built a pop band with grand ambitions.

“Buildings and Mountains” is the first song on “Keep Color,” and it’s the perfect introduction to the Tigers’ sound. The song has already earned significant recognition (a “Grey’s Anatomy” appearance), and rightfully so: It’s sweet, breezy and majestic, and its familiar vibe evokes many comparisons.

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The Republic Tigers
‘Keep Color’

(Chop Shop)

★★★ 1/2

The Shins, for one, come to mind, but there’s much more going on here than just another update of ’60s psychedelic folk.

Throughout “Color” the Tigers blend live, organic music with laptop effects and loops (“Made Concrete”), so you can include the Postal Service and Air on any list of comparisons.

But “Color” sounds born of other eras. The song “Feelin’ the Future” feels oh-so vaguely early-’70s and British, like Supertramp; the cut “Golden Sand” recalls the Church (the “Heyday” album); the luscious “Contortionists” sounds like Lindsay Buckingham’s dreamier work on Fleetwood Mac’s “Tusk” (like “That’s All for Everyone”); and throughout “Color” the melodies ring and the production crackles like XTC’s “Skylarking,” produced by Todd Rundgren.

In the end those comparisons are inadequate or misleading because they signify methods more than results. “Keep Color” is pop but not Top 40 pop or even your “Garden State” variety alternative-pop. It’s more epic and momentous and euphoric.

Each song is an ornate suite of hooks, riffs, harmonies and layers of catchy sounds and embellishments (vocal lines, squiggles of guitar, filigrees of keyboard, accordion) with some twists thrown in, like sharp shifts in time signature (“Give Arm to Its Socket”).

“Keep Color” pays dividends right off the bat, but it’s also an album that reveals new rewards with each visit. In fact, there are so many rewards to gather, you might want to start off listening in smaller doses.

Digested in its entirety, “Color” feels almost too rich and clever, too relentless in its scope and ambitions — kind of like the dialogue in “Juno.” That’s just an advisement, not a complaint.

At a time when so many bands seem to run out of bright ideas before they can finish an album, the Tigers stand out for having so many, they don’t know where to put them all.

| Timothy Finn, The Star

Comments

[Derek Donovan]

The XTC parallel is a good one, and I hear it now that you bring it up. I'm really enjoying the record - great review.

[Andrew Turner]

I love that song - what a cool video, too.

I can't wait to buy the disc...