Olive Tiger.
“The Boys,” from Olive Tiger’s latest release, Softest Eyes: Side A, starts off with a growling drone, a pulse, and then pounding drums, the kind of beat that can make people put down their drinks in a club, get up, and swing their hips to. The vocal wastes no time to come in, with a message to deliver: “Why don’t the boys paint their faces? / My mother laughed and called it ‘war paint’ / Pink pepper spray on a keychain / My father gave me mace for Christmas / Because he loves me.” On that last line, the guitar lets it rip, noise rattles in the distance. The voice has more to say, as a organ joins the sound, filling it out. “Why are the boys taught survival? / All I got was that friendship bracelet / Homework to draw a pretty tiger / I quit the Girl Scouts from that assignment / Because I love me.”
Musically, “The Boys” makes a statement for the New Haven-based band as well, as it marks a turn toward a different sound. Over the past five years Olive Tiger made a name for a sound that put cello and violin — played by Olive and Jesse Newman, respectively — forward, as on its 2016 release Until My Body Breaks. That release featured cleaner production and an emphasis on a more intimate, chamber-music sound, accentuated by skittering percussion and fluttering vocals. “Softest Eyes” isn’t like that; it features a slower, more expansive sound — more distortion, more reverb — and mixes the strings with instruments more typical of indie rock, like guitars (played by Olive), keyboards (played by Newman), and a full drum kit (played alternately by John McGrath and Dane Scozzari).
But the change in sound doesn’t mean that Olive Tiger has simply become more conventional. “Vapor,” the second song on the EP, begins with a bouncing guitar line, the vocal line floating over it in surprising ways. Violins create a mood and give the drums a chance to shift from rhythm to rhythm. In the second verse, the instruments start to build momentum that, in a more typical song, might lead to a big chorus. Instead, at the end of the verse, the song shifts into uncertain, unsettling territory, a taste of noise and guided by the strings. The sound keeps developing and unfolding, so that, by the time the vocal returns with a keening query — “where is your heart?” — the music has gone to a very different place, preparing the listener for the truly epic chorus that follows, full of rock-orchestral flourishes that hearken back to the glorious excesses of the 1970s and Camper Van Beethoven’s own experiments with strings without being beholden to any of them.
Likewise, “The Choir” moves on a plucked cello line and whistling keyboard part, before moving on a percussion part that uses pieces large and small to create a gentle push. And “The Crucible,” the EP’s final track, starts lush and beautiful, then opens into an anthem with the help of some powerful drums. The sense of release is mirrored in the lyrics. “Down through the waves, and the sun oscillates / Spreading its arms open wide,” Olive sings. “Sunken, encased in velvet and lace / Crucible beckoning bright / Down through the waves, let the current erase / Traces of urges to hide / No more will I hide.” As “The Crucible” glides into a huge, serene chord to get lost in, the song — and the album as a whole — feels like a rebirth.
Which brings us to the tantalizing clue in the title that the EP is Side A of a longer work. Side B (and possibly C and D) are planned already, suggesting that Softest Eyes still has a long and exciting road ahead of it.
