Discover the hauntingly beautiful fables of Supercaan’s highly anticipated second album, as they delve into themes of progress, vanity, and grief, all set to soaring anthemic indie rock.
birmingham, United Kingdom
Release Date: 2024-04-12
Check out A Tiger Walks The Streets here: A Tiger Walks The Streets Album Link
At the heart of Birmingham—a city famous for its musical heritage—Supercaan emerged as an indie-tight rock band, fearless in the face of their deepest anxieties and the existential questions that keep the modern world up at night. Released digitally and on vinyl, “A Tiger Walks the Streets” is their second album after a critically acclaimed “The Cross and the Switchblade,” delving deep into a journey set against the most eclectic soundscapes of rock, electronic, and anthemic melodies.
The Genesis of “A Tiger Walks the Streets” The most interesting title on the album, “A Tiger Walks the Streets,” comes from a haunted line within the existential anthem “Nagoro,” named after the creepy, rural Japanese village where scarecrow dolls stand in for the population lost to urban migration. The lyricist, Tom Whitfield, uses this village as a metaphor for the costs of development; the tiger represents the lurking, menacing threat of modernity.
Whitfield describes the album as akin to a children’s book, where each track unfolds as a fable.
“We’re not kids anymore, and now we all have families, so this album was written for them,” Whitfield says. Lyrics packed with the kind of wise naivety that renders tracks charmingly unrepeatable, much like children’s stories for grown-ups or fables for a new age. This work supplemented the classic childhood innocence and structured rigidity of society with the painted wooden toy blocks of frontman Greg Milner.
Exploring Universal Anxieties From the propulsive urgency of “Zoetrope,” a dissection of society’s double standards, to the reflective tones of “Everything Collapses,” a tribute to a former bandmate, Supercaan’s music can find its way through many of the complicated landscapes presented by vanity, grief, and society critique.
Of special note is “Everything Collapses,” a cathartic paean envisioning the continuation of legacy through the image of a friend’s son banging on drums.
Channeling their sound from bands like Broken Social Scene and Six By Seven, Supercaan evoke a brooding sound of nostalgic synths and contemplative vocals. They have been creating music, trying for an ambitious approach and doing songs which would tell a logical story all over the album. In that sense, “A Tiger Walks the Streets” follows that ethos: each song has its own inspiration and sensibility but is a part of the larger narrative whole.
The Recording Process: A Lockdown Creation “A Tiger Walks The Streets” was formed during the first lockdown in March 2020, which eventually provoked the highly trying period that had the band on the paths of inventing and adapting. Working with producer Simon Weaver, Supercaan has summoned the odds and turned isolation into creativity. “Recording on our own afforded us more time to really zone in on the sound we were bringing to the album, from start to finish,” says Milner, an introspective highlight on the process that led to this.
Against the Grain: Creating for Art’s Sake In an industry often dictated by algorithms and commercial pressure, Supercaan rises above to remain the vessels of artistic integrity. “We really wanted to make this album for ourselves. “We never wrote to a Spotify Algorithm or radio playlist, it’s nearly four minutes before you hear a vocal,” says Whitfield.
New Additions and Collaborations This has really given an even rawer and more physical edge to the music of Supercaan. No doubt further aided by a whole host of collaborations and others, like the aforementioned remix of “Zoetrope” by Chris Olley himself, this journey leads to the song having its doom-laden overture.
This further discloses that Supercaan operates across several interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary media with filmmakers and artists as highlighted by the band’s nomination at the Birmingham Film Festival for their video “Zoetrope. Looking Forward: Supercaan’s Vision As Supercaan roars off with their next chapter, ‘A Tiger Walks the Streets’ testifies to this growth in the art and heart of Supercaan. Mixing his personal stories with wider social commentary, it offers the listener a look at just what has been happening in the world. Armed with a bold sound and thoughtful lyricism, Supercaan represents an indie rock frontier that’s forever shifting but manages to sum up a deep sense of humanity and introspection.
“A Tiger Walks the Streets,” at a time so precariously situated as this, would almost seem to offer perspective and comfort in the sense that yes, in our darkest hour, there can be light, music, and fellowship. Supercaan’s journey is far from done, and if this record is anything to go by, they more than held their own stories in the balance between past and promise.
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