Tiger Mountain - Get Along Like a House on Fire

Genre pop Publisher Lucky Cat Records External Links Tiger Mountain

Get Along Like a House on Fire is a re-creation of a power-pop album circa 1979. This New York group knows all the tricks: cheesy synth sounds, a slow one with electric piano, ostinatos, wah-wah punctuation, falsetto backing vocals, unexceptional use of minor chords, choruses, bridges. Some of these tunes sound like what The Shazam do about equally as well: fairly simple structures that are a bit more sophisticated than they appear. As are The Shazam, Tiger Mountain are obvious but they echo other music that is a bit subtler without actually being subtle themselves.

But whereas The Shazam are basically antic--Hans Rotenberry's subject is his own lack of a subject, lack of seriousness, pure formal mastery--Tiger Mountain are, you know, sincere. Lots of songs here about woman problems: "She Played Me Too" refers to a "dragon lady" who is also a go-go dancer, apparently from Saratoga. In that one the dragon lady steals the singer's keys; "The Occasion" finds Tiger Mountain "stuck inside of a Russian novella," in the back of a pickup truck, trying to convince this girl that the occasion is nigh for love. Anyway, stick with me, this song asserts, and we'll triumph over the sharks in the water and all the users who wait for "leftover pieces of your soul." I haven't been sleeping on these floors and standing freezing by the Massachusetts Turnpike for nothing, baby.

Later on there's a tune about another woman who's apparently having confidence issues and is therefore forced to "dream up anything to escape the here and now." Which leads to the other time-honored theme explored on Get Along, Making It in a World Gone Mad. The opener, "Shouldn't Be Long," uses guitar ostinato and well-timed triplets (a staple in power-pop since the Beatles introduced the device in the end of "I Want to Hold Your Hand") to underscore the message that "calendar pages are turning" and "there's some kind of new underground" (again, very New Wave thinking). In "Century's Gone" (which ought to be the single if it isn't already), what the singer learned in school is of no help, "indulgence is our stock in trade," therefore, the century's gone mad and good riddance, so why not let it go? "A Certain Slice" asks the question, "Do they expect me to build a fortress/With this pile of sticks they lay before us?" The fortress, of course, being the mostly up-tempo, moderately melodic, not unintelligent, quasi-power-pop the band has concocted here. OK, maybe a bigger apartment would also be nice.

Tiger Mountain bears comparison with Jet, and in some ways they're better. Get Along Like a House on Fire is even programmed in the same way as is Jet's Get Born, with Beatle-esque balladry thrown in to slow things down. While the singing is a bit dry and if there's a sense of humor I don't hear too much of it (one can't joke about woman problems and making it in America's nuclear wasteland), the total sincerity is all-American, as is the lack of glamour in the music. Which makes this an interesting example of retro-rock; unlike Jet or many another new '70s-derived pop band, they seem to really mean what they say and deliver it without undue obliquity or rock-star ego (and with a more brutal drum attack), yet they've obviously heard the same canonical, cool stuff most power-pop bands have, so there are some nice textures and a bag of fairly reliable tricks to get the music across. Whether or not Tiger Mountain or Jet or The Shazam mean much more than the sum of their influences is of course an old question and one best left unanswered.