Tiger Waves

Tiger Waves know the tyranny of distance, and they seemed to have tamed it for their purposes. In the spring of 2011, the foundation was laid online between two songwriters—James Marshall in Austin, Reid Comstock in Chicago. Tiger Waves is a band born of dropboxes, email attachments and CD-Rs and while the two principal songwriters living 1,000 miles apart, it isn’t surprising that the music took on the expanses of the information highway during it’s travels back and forth between the city of Big Shoulders and the Live Music Capital of the World. The tunes have no blank spots or rests but instead expand and contract in a thrilling, enchanting pulse with Reid Comstock’s whispers and strained notes cutting through the mix like a depressed, Beach Boys cast-off in the middle of a hyperactive beach party. The music, however, isn’t necessarily the cold, detached product of two kids with MacBooks. It sounds more like a bit of cosmic sunshine-pop-flavored zeitgeist made by two music fans with some digital constraints and liberties. And one of them is a philosopher, sometimes you can totally tell. After Reid relocated to Austin, the duo expanded into a quintet—adding the guitar virtuosity and songwriting prowess of a young Tyler Wharen, the steady bass of Bowie-lookalike Kevin Brown, and the multi-instrumental skills of PJ Theberge.