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Miniature Tigers – Tell it To the Volcano – Modern Art Records

Posted By: localeye | February 26, 2010 | No comments

by: localeye

Miniature Tigers – Tell it To the Volcano – Modern Art Records
www.myspace.com/miniaturetigers

I’m not a professor of literature, a journalist, or even someone that has a grasp on the English language all that well. I mean, when I’m done writing this I will have someone proofread it because I went to Catholic school and a Catholic school education sucks, unless you like wearing ties and religion class. I sit in front of the computer most days drawing things that make me money, so I listen to a lot of music. In a sense, I am a professional listener.

Most of the time when you read reviews it’s a new release that is being discussed. Well this is not a new release, but just because I didn’t find the album the day it came out doesn’t make it old. I found Miniature Tigers’ Tell It to the Volcano about 6 months ago, and I still listen to it quite frequently. It was released in September 2008, and I’m doing this review because they will be playing at Johnny Brenda’s on Wednesday, March 10. I’m doing you this favor so as to encourage you to go and stand quietly in front of the stand, to slightly move your head, and to maybe bend your knees just a bit.

The quickest way to describe Miniature Tigers would be to label them as “indie-pop”—that head bobbing, singy-song, harmony infused kind of indie-pop. Traditional reviews tend to break down the album song by song, to scrutinize scraps of lyrics, to say ‘this song sounds great’ and ‘they sound like this band’ and ‘the singer wears blue pants’—you get the picture. I’ll save the space here and say instead that honestly, I just really like this album. It’s infectious in a calm and soothing way.

Good. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, on to what this band ‘sounds like,’ what some of the lyrics ‘are’ and ‘what shade of blue the singer’s pants are.‘

If I had to throw comparisons out there, I would say the Miniature Tigers manage a nice mix of Death Cab For Cutie and Ben Folds (they toured with him). The lyrics are both creative and humorous, and the songs are catchy—and I’m a sucker for catchy. Like most pop oriented albums, Tell It to the Volcano is fairly short, clocking in at about 30 minutes. Songs like “Dino Damage”, “The Wolf”, “Giraffe” and “Last Night’s Fake Blood” are the standouts and possess the ability to work their way into your head and bounce around for a bit. The clunkers on this album would probably be “Like or Like Like” and “Haunted Pyramid”, but not because they are necessarily ‘bad’ songs, it’s just that compared to the rest of the album they tend to bore me.

Something about this album that you will not read in any review, on the web, or in print publications is what I have come to call the Snow Shovel Rating. I listened to this album while I was digging out the 42 1/2 feet of snow that has been dropped on us over the last month, and I can attest to the fact that it is a very good album to shovel some miserable, heavy, wet snow. It succeeds in putting a bounce into a very boring and irritating situation. And since it doesn’t look like the winter will end until June, you might want to throw this onto your fancy ear box for your best shoveling adventure. Unfortunately, people in Florida & Arizona will not get to experience the real pleasure of this album since they fail to truly experience the throes of winter, and I really, really feel sorry for them. In short, if you are reading this review and its warm outside, you are not getting the full experience. But feel free to get in touch. We can become friends, and I’ll set you up with a shovel and some headphones like a good friend does.

Snow Shovel Rating: 3.5/5 shovels