When Stone Gossard heard Tigercub’s second album, As Blue as Indigo, he was so infatuated that he used the Pearl Jam Twitter account to ask the band to sign to his label, Loosegrove Records.
“It’s the sort of thing you dream about as a kid – you go to a gig, and the guitarist points you out and goes, ‘Come up here!’” says Jamie Hall. “It was a big move to do that so publicly, and it’s very nourishing to have the respect of your peers. We were never gonna say no!”
Welcoming the British alt-rock trio into the Loosegroove family was a coup for Gossard, who sees Hall as a generational talent. “I’d put his riffs up against anyone in rock today,” he gushes. “He’s as good as Homme or Morello, and he can frickin’ sing and play them at the same time. Insane.”
Article continues belowIf you make a mistake, but the vibe of the take was really good, that’s more valuable than something that’s neat and tidy. I think Pearl Jam recorded Even Flow like 70 times live, without a click. I hadn’t even questioned the click!
One thing we learned from Stone was that if you play as close to live as possible and put as little processing in the way of what you're doing, it’s easier to sound like yourself.
Nets to Catch the Wind was recorded live with a WEM Dominator combo, Hiwatt Custom 50, or a Peavey Bandit paired with a JCM800, and a Korg SDD-3000 delay pedal. The rest was all tone and volume control, fingers on the strings, and using different plectrums. There’s more room to project your personality onto a more basic setup.
Cave divers go to huge depths, and if they don't have their oxygen levels diluted with another other gas, they get punch drunk and don't know which way is up. Having too much gear can have the same effect – just without life-threatening consequences!
What guitars did you record with?
I’ve got a Chapman of every flavor. My main guitar was the ML3 BEA Rabea Massaad signature baritone. Rabea's film studio is next door to our locker, and when he made the switch to Music Man, I got a text one day like, “I’ve got all this stuff. What do you want?”
Experiencing drop C and lower on a longer scale was eye-opening. The strings are like fucking train tracks, so it was a bit of a learning curve, and playing with a wound G meant bluesy guitar solos were off the menu. I ended up doing more John McGeoch or The Edge-type stuff. But it’s got a real throaty, midrange quality to it.
The stock ML3s with single coils are really good. I’ve got two with maple necks. The black one was a rental; it was the local bike and a bit knackered, but it’s got this lovely chimey, upper-harmonic character in standard. My tobacco one is great for the Tom Morello drop C stuff; it never fails me.
For the drop-tuned stuff, I also used an ML1X Strat; it works really well in the out-of-phase position. If you roll the volume knob off to seven, the gain goes down, but it gets brighter – it could take the fucking enamel off your teeth. I use it for high, soaring arena stuff.
The riffs live on their own. Their only relationship to the key of the song is the first note
I mostly soloed on a standard-scale Lawmaker. And they all went into various overdrive pedals to push the front end of the amps, which were all screaming.
You teased a signature Chapman a couple of years back; what happened?
It’s not in the works anymore. I’d customized my black ML3 with gothic decals that represented the Perfume of Decay album art, and I threw a hot rail pickup in there so it could cover a little more ground, so I wouldn’t need as many guitar changes. Rob wanted to put that version on sale.
I used a bespoke company called Burnt Axe for the etchings, but we got ghosted, and that prolonged things to the point that there was a change in the structure of the business. So for the minute, that’s on hiatus.
Tell me more about those amp combos.
I created my own kind of Jenga mishmash of amps. We bought an old Peavey Bandit, which was loads of fun for ’80s metal. The WEM has an old Fane speaker, so it’s really midrangey. It sounds quite restricted on its own, but it plugs a gap when it’s coupled with a JCM800. I can’t move away from Marshalls – I think they sound best when everything’s on 10, and I let the guitar controls determine what happens next.
There was an old Fender Twin at Rockfield Studios that everyone’s played through; it’s a rite of passage to use that. But between the Hiwatt, the WEM and the Marshall, you’ve pretty much got every base covered.
What other gear are you loving?
We toured with Eyehategod in America, and Jimmy Bower used an Ampeg SS-150 with two Mesa/Boogie cabs. It was the most punishing live tone I’ve ever heard. I had to get one. It’s really great for the sludgy stuff.
What makes a great Tigercub riff?
Most of them have some form of chromaticism. They live on their own, outside of the key of the song, so the only relationship the riff has to the key of the song is the first note. The rest is just corkscrewing dramatic stuff.
Mickie Most used to look at songs as mini films with a cinematic quality. It’s nice to play with people’s expectations.
- Nets to Catch the Wind is out now via Loosegroove Records.
