ALBUM REVIEW: Pura Vida – Tigress
They say good things come to those who wait. It’s an old adage, and it often feels outdated, but Chelmsford outliers TIGRESS are proof in the pudding that good things really can come to those who wait, and they’ve been waiting for quite some time.
TIGRESS emerged kicking and screaming over a decade ago, having spent five years as the paint-by-numbers pop-punk outfit THE HYPE THEORY. Until one day in 2015, they suddenly announced that the former had disbanded forever, and all of the members were starting from scratch as the genre-agnostic TIGRESS. After a string of EPs, the fivesome of Katy Jackson, Sean Bishop, Tom Harrison, Jack Divey and Josh Coombes finally have a debut album to deliver.
Pura Vida, inspired by a Costa Rican way of life meaning ‘pure life’, owes as much to the poppy post-grunge movement of the 90s as it does the indie pop-rock infusion artists have indulged in over these last few years. Listening to Choke is like downing an unfiltered cup of GARBAGE and BUSH-flavoured coffee, whilst Disconnect channels the chaotic math-rock-meets-alt-rock energy MARMOZETS meddle in. Elsewhere, the empowerment acts like PALE WAVES and WOLF ALICE have provided in recent memory is evident all over I’ll Find Me Another You, as glittery dream-pop dances with anthemic alt-rock.
There’s so many strands to TIGRESS‘ DNA that Pura Vida often feels like you’re listening to an identity crisis. It’s also what sets them apart from the pantry full of acts attempting the same buffet-like approach to genreless alternative music. No sound outstays its welcome, although you are left chomping at the bit for more of some than others. It’s no secret that the hauntingly delicious depths of Starting Tomorrow promises so much potential for lo-fi balladry offshoots, yet the album flirts far too much with other things to build on it.
TIGRESS have had plenty of time to find their footing as a band, to decide on what they’re trying to say definitively. However, just like the music, their lyrics mirror a band going under growing pains and identity crises. Weirdly though, it works. Our attention spans are so short, and we share the same disillusionment with social media, technology, and modern society that Pura Vida explores that you find a little piece of you hiding in each song.
From crushing the industry’s hopeless romantics with a song about real-life relationships on F.L.Y., to addressing the problematic normalisation of expectation vs reality with women’s bodies on social media in Hungry, there’s a lot to unpack. It’s all said with such powerful conviction by vocalist Katy Jackson that it hits straight-up like an uppercut, poignantly exemplified on Disconnect as she cuts open the vulnerability with lines like “Don’t know what you’re expecting, nobody likes their own reflection.”
In Pura Vida, TIGRESS prove that patience is a virtue and practice makes perfect. They’ve delivered a debut that dazzles and delights, but ultimately scratches at the surface of a band with so much more potential. All they need to do is fix themselves to a set sound and master that rather than be a jack of all genres.
Rating: 8/10
Pura Vida is set for release on September 3rd via Humble Angel Records.
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