Tigercity
If you tried to catch Tigercity at Union South on Saturday night but found only an empty room, chances are you weren't the only one. Band members Aynsley Powell, Bill Gillim, Joel Ford, and Andrew Brady, on their third week of a month long tour, ran into complications with a faulty GPS device and arrived an hour and a half late for the gig.
Their lack of punctuality, however, wasn't dismissed with any rock star airs. After being ribbed by this reviewer for an alleged air of pretense, Gillim apologized. "I feel bad," he said. "One thing led to another, you know?"
Perhaps to atone for any bad karma created, these Brooklyn boys put on one of the best shows in one of the worst venues that this reviewer has ever encountered. As headliners at the Bowery Ballroom in New York, Tigercity knows how to fill a room. But even in a brightly lit space with a broken disco ball and a sparse crowd of mainly drunken freshmen, a party was made.
The dreamy falsetto of lead singer Gillim, coupled with an '80s synthesizer and Powell's tight drumming, entices each listener to think less and dance more. With most indie bands, movement in a crowd is limited toe tapping and an emphatic nodding of the head.
But because Tigercity is so happily unself conscious about the cheesiness of its music, the effervescence is infectious. Imagine if Hall & Oates had a musical love child with the Brazilian Girls. Tigercity manages to balance the throwback of its sound with the talent of its musicians, and the inevitable feeling that this reviewer gets that this star is on the rise.
Stylofone, another Brooklyn-based band, started the late night out right with a sound reminiscent of the latest British import, the Kooks, but with a seventies rockabilly flair. The boy-choir harmonies on every hook are infectious. It's rare to see a whole group sing so tightly onstage.
Each band stood in the audience for the other and danced with no inhibitions. Whether it was the music or the unbridled enthusiasm of the music-makers, the result was a giddy adrenaline rush.
