Fire Up Those Lava Lamps
On their first-full length, the Miniature Tigers pay homage to their heroes in what unfortunately sounds like souped-up demos. Tell It to the Volcano itself is like a lost sketch from The Kinks. I can almost hear Ray Davies’ sardonic whine all over this tune. On ‘Hot Venom,’ some kind of cartoonish calliope, or something from an old Atari game like Breakout, rings throughout. A Casio-keyboard patch provides the clave beat on ‘Tchaikovsky & Solitude.’ On ‘The Wolf,’ the Miniature Tigers’ lips are flaming to the beat of Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You.’ The Beatles-esque ‘Giraffe’ breaks apart into grunge madness and static. And their homage to ‘Annie Oakley’ has the requisite hand-claps to lift up another average pop track.
By John Madera.