Hooray! A flattering review in Brisbane. That Tobes and his lyrics, he's a winner.
Time Off Magazine (Brisbane)
Sam Hobson
21st July 2010
From a Liar to a Thief
Rating 4.5/5
Beginning at first with a rather beguiling flash of style and hot, exposed flesh, Melbourne sextet The Tiger & Me’s debut is a surprisingly complex gem of an album which, soon after that first glimpse of cabaret so saucily splayed across all of its packaging quickly simmers down into something totally different entirely. For all of their European folk influences, late-night speakeasy stylings, and the odd flares of Spanish dance, From A Liar To A Thief is really quite an emotionally affronting listen. What the band have so deliciously managed to do – think, at first, an album that sounds like something The Cat Empire would make; that really feverish, richly multicultural live-act sound, and then imagine that irrevocably pared down to something that sounds like Damien Rice meets the sweet, harmonised indie folk-ballads of Headlights – is perhaps used the pomp and ostentatiousness of the exotic genres they take their influences from – deep red lipsticks, the heat of clunking passodoble heels, and the swathe of unabashedly bourgeois-bohemian attire – to play out a more heightened breadth of emotions. It all results in a really affecting honesty, this melding of superficiality – in the least pejorative of senses – and raw heartbreak.
The track ‘Til Sunrise’ is really where this all begins to make sense, effectively informing the root sensibility of all the tracks on the album that surrounds it. Each singer’s voice aches with the exquisite texture of hurt and sadness, and the instruments which began the album with such cheek and frivolity – accordion, ukulele, banjo, mandolin, and keys – suddenly become instruments of an almost overwhelming pathos. Lyrically, the tracks steals the show with an emotional erudition similar again to the likes of Damien Rice, and fellow late-night tall-taler Tom Waits, and the melodic invention on display amidst all this prettiness is a whole ‘nother kind of heel-stomping good.
HHHH ½
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