20 Thoughts on Spin

When Ben Walsh sang, “Locked up with my thoughts in my head again” on “Teenage Rocket” from 2014’s Charmer, I related to those lines so hard that I had to pull over. I think a lot of thoughts as I’m sure everyone does, but for this review[1], I want to talk about some of the thoughts I think when I listen to the new Tigers Jaw album, Spin.

#1 Initial Thought: 10 seconds into “Follows” and I love this, those first few strums immediately call to mind so many Tigers Jaw songs that are dear to me while still sounding like something fresh and new.

#2 Next Thought: The title “Follows” autocorrects in my mind every time to It Follows, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing as I then end up imagining this song soundtracking the 2014 horror movie. The funny thing is that it actually kind of works. With a chorus that goes: “I should have listened to you when you said/’nothing will make this easier’/ I should have listened to you when you said/’running won’t get you away from this’/it follows wherever I go.” Maybe that was their intention. Either way, I think there may be an It Follows 2 in production so I would like to recommend this song for that soundtrack if nothing else. 

#3 “Favorite” Thought: I like that this song is only two minutes (and four seconds) long.

#4 Favorite Thought: The weekend this album came out, my family and I went up to Chicago to stay with my wife’s long lost half brother and his husband for the first time.[2] I kept playing this album on repeat as we rode around together in the big red van, hitting up some tourist spots and meeting some of their family. This album provided the perfect soundtrack for what was such a great weekend for us. It’s my hope that when I listen to Spin at later points in my life, I will be able to recall that feeling of riding around in the van with all of us together, laughing and feeling like we’ve known each other longer than we have.

#5 A May 2017 Thought on “June”: Yes! This song is awesome. It makes me feel warm and happy, much like the title would suggest. I love that Brianna sings lead throughout and I can definitely see this song becoming one of my favorite Tigers Jaw songs ever with repeated listens.

#6 Biased Thought: Tigers Jaw are[3] awesome and anyone that doesn’t like this band is wrong.

#7 Great Transition Thought: The end of “Blurry Visions” transitions so well into “Guardian.” Those delayed strums, man, yeah, that's the stuff.

#8 Nice Guy Thought: A few years ago I wrote a chorus for an alliswell song that went: “This is a song I wrote/trying to sound like Tigers Jaw[4]/These are the thoughts that I thought/While driving to work in my car/and they go ‘blah, blah, blah’.” Anyways, my friend Wes, later emailed Tigers Jaw a link to that song and they replied back (see pic below) very sweetly. They seem like nice, kindhearted people.

#9 Bridge Serving a Song Well Thought: From about the 2:42-3:35 mark in “Guardian” is such a tasteful guitar riff. It compliments the rest of the song so well. Usually the singy parts are my favorite parts of a song, but here the riffy parts are the best, though it's all great.

#10 Best Lyric to Sing Along to in My Car Thought: “I PUT IT ALL ON THE LINE, WILL YOU BE MY ESCAPE PLA-AAAAAAAAN.”

#11 Second Best Lyric to Sing Along to in My Car Thought: “SECOND BEST, OH, SECOND BEST, I CAN LEARN TO LIVE WITH THIS.”[5]

#12 A June 2017 Thought Looking Back on May 2017: “Oh, wow, I can’t believe Trump one-upped the downward-spiraling-holy-shit-insanity of May 12th-May 19th but today (when I finally post this thing) the Comey testimony is happening. But hey, at least this Tigers Jaw album is still great. And ‘June’ is definitely one of my favorite TJ songs ever now that I’ve spent some time with it.”

#13 A Stretch from Twin Peaks-to-Leftovers Thought: I am pretty sure that the members of Tigers Jaw are Twin Peaks fans as evidenced by the subtle to not so subtle references in “Frame You” and “Nervous Kids” from Charmer. And I know that Twin Peaks just had its season premier the same weekend that Spin was released, so I wonder if that was intentional or just a happy coincidence. A simple Google search could probably reveal the answer to me, but I’d prefer to believe that it was intentional, because I like when things are intentional. Regardless, I have never watched Twin Peaks[6], but I do love the Leftovers, which is also awesome and weird and stylish, so maybe that counts for something.

#14 A Text from Major After I Told Him How Much I Love This Album: “Eh, the lyrics are just okay, catchy hooks are cool, but it felt like less interesting, slowed down Joyce Manor. I got bored by track 6-7. Only song I really liked was June.”

#15 Song Serving as a Bridge Thought: “Bullet” is interesting as it feels like an older Tigers Jaw song while also displaying their maturity as a band. 

#16 Potentially Underrated Song Thought: “Make It Up” is sneaky good. Though truthfully, the whole back half of the record is sneaky good. I mean tracks 1-6 are such good jams[7] that one would expect the back half of the record to suffer for it, but I don’t feel that’s the case here.

#17 An Odd Metaphor That I Actually Like A Lot Thought: “It’s like rolling down the windows on the highway/It hurts to hear you say that I was only in the way.” The first time I heard this lyric, I was like, “I don’t know if I like that.” But then after I listened to it more, I was like, “Yeah.” It calls to mind another odd metaphor that I like a lot from the album Jam Dreams by Dr. Manhattan that goes: “It’s like a sticker losing sticky and reapplication.” And I guess “odd” may be the wrong word here, because it’s not like either of those metaphors are a stretch or like they don’t make sense. It’s more that they make too much sense that it can be like, “Why write that?” But then when you think about it some more, you’re like, “Okay, yeah, that’s great.”[8]

#18 Best Hook On An Album of Great Hooks: “These days it’s hard not to feel alone/There is a dull glow coming from your window.”

#19 A Text from Payton When I Asked Him What He Thought About Spin: “I like it! Every track is solid. It’s nice to hear Brianna take the lead on more songs too. And Will Yip did a phenomenal job producing it. That all said, they definitely played it safe in the song writing sense. I didn’t get the same sense of edge compared to their older records. It used to sound like they were just spilling their guts out on tape, which tends to feel more honest. This record seems more reserved but also more professional. I’ve only listened through 3 or 4 times though so maybe my opinion will change with time.”   

#20 Nostalgic Thought: Listening to Spin calls to mind that time Coleman and I were making an early morning drive down to Nashville for a “business”[9] meeting for our band. Anyways, we were both tired and not really talking until he put on Tigers Jaw’s self-titled album and we both sang the whole thing at the top of our lungs for its duration. Since the meeting itself ended with us being stood-up, or let down, or some combination of the two, that part of our drive down stands out as an endearing memory from that time. Listening to Spin reminds me of those early Tigers Jaw albums that my friends and I had so many memories to, while also being something new lending itself well to the creation of new memories.

#21 BONUS: A Ranking Thought: Now that I’ve spent some time with this album, I feel this compulsion to rank it among the other Tigers Jaw albums. So for the sake of that, I will rank it third behind their self-titled album and Charmer. I know that may make it seem like I like this album less than I actually do, but I hope that’s not the case as I like this album a lot. It’s just that I also love those two records[10] and there are memories that are wrapped up with those albums that also factor in to how I rank them, though that could change in time. As far as how this album ranks against other albums from this year, I’d also put it third behind David Bazan’s Care and Kendrick Lamar’s Damn, but that could also change before the year’s over.

Spin is available on all digital music outlets as well as the Tigers Jaw webstore. I recommend giving it a listen so you can have some thoughts of your own. 

[1] Editor Note: the author employs a very liberal use of the word review here.

[2] This story is a good one, though it will have to wait until another time, because their story isn’t mine to tell. 

[3] Is? I always get confused with whether or not I should use plural/singular verbs when referring to a band. I’ve done a few Google searches and they all basically equal the shrug emoji so we’ll go with the plural while Word gives me the squiggly green line to passive-aggressively insult my intelligence.

[4] Spoiler: That song definitely didn’t sound like Tigers Jaw, which is what inevitably happens when I try to emulate another artist, which makes it okay, I think.

[5] To save any confusion, no, Tigers Jaw doesn’t (don’t? didn’t?) cover Pedro the Lion on their new album anywhere. That was me just trying to make a joke. I’m okay with it if it didn’t work. I can learn to live with it.

[6] Though I plan to someday. I’ve heard that it’s okay to skip a good chunk of the second season so that makes it more appealing for me to start.

[7] Editor’s Note: An early draft of this “review” used the word bangers here in place of jams. However, that word made the author feel weird, kinda like how he feels when he wears sunglasses when he’s not driving, like you have to reach a certain level of coolness in order to wear sunglasses while not driving or to use words like bangers and if you have a slight doubt that you’re not cool enough to do those things, well, then, I got news for you, you’re definitely not cool enough for those things.

[8] This whole mess of a paragraph is an odd metaphor for the point I’m trying to make.

[9] Editor’s Note: the author is making a very aggressive use of the quotation marks around business here as the meeting seemed like a big deal at the time, but ended up being nothing.

[10] Two Worlds is of course great too, but I like Spin better.