Oddly, for a band called The Big Sleep, their debut lp is one of those rare records that sounds immeasurably better at 4 a.m. than it ever could on, say, a Tuesday morning. ‘Son Of Tiger’ is the product of three friends shredding the three minute pop rulebook in a NY flat and creating a work of lush, tense psych-rock. Take the trance-inducing math-pop of ‘Shima’, all chiming, low-slung guitars and reverb soaked abandon. First single ‘Murder’, with a title which may not see them soaring up Radio 1’s daytime playlist, is a dark, building punk-bullet which sounds brooding and strangely beautiful. Then there’s the mind-altering guitar attack on ‘Are You Ready For Love?’ (sadly not a prog cover of Sir Elton’s pap-pop classic) which builds into a brutal crescendo of fraught feedback. Son Of Tiger is emotional, deeply psychedelic and doused in the ghosts of a thousand shoegazers.
