Out Of Nowhere

It's been hard to avoid Tigertown over the past 12 months. The Sydney five-piece have gone from strength to strength since releasing their self-titled debut EP in 2011. They sold out their first ever live show at Sydney's Raval Theatre, later hit triple j with breakthrough single Lions And Witches and have since delivered support duties for Matt Corby, Husky, Emma Louise and Founds (among others).

“We're always pretty surprised at how fast it's happened,” singer/guitarist Chris Collins muses. “When we put together the CD ourselves, it got played on triple j, like, later that week. A month later, we got the Matt Corby tour and then we got the Husky tour. It all happened pretty quick. We only really formed in April of last year, so we've kind of only been touring and playing shows for about 12 months.”

Yet, for all of their accomplishments to date, there remains precious little information about the band or their formation. It's not commonly circulated, for example, that the band are a family affair – husband and wife Chris and Charlie Collins rounding out their songwriting partnerships with their respective siblings – or that both Chris and Charlie Collins were in longstanding bands before Tigertown (Chasing Bailey for Charlie, The View for Chris).

“Yeah, when we met, I was in a band I'd been in since I was 18 and Charlie was in another band with her family,” Collins says of their history. “When we met, we started writing songs together in our bedrooms and it all just kind of grew from there. It's kind of been a second chance for both of us, in a funny sort of way. Because we've all been in bands before, everything runs a lot smoother for Tigertown.”

Mystique appears to be very much a part of the band's identity. Their sound is a gorgeous wash of song and subtlety – quiet and layered. Their online presence is notable but bereft of substantial detail. It's telling that, when discussing Tigertown's sound, Collins specifically avoids words such as 'folk'. One gets the feeling he doesn't want his band (or its members) to become some kind of product.

“We do like a bit of mystery. We definitely use that word a lot – 'keeping the mystery' is a phrase we like to throw around,” the singer laughs. “If anything, we're probably trying to avoid sounding like more bands or genres than we are trying to sound like ones. Now that we've been an actual band for a while, we have to catch ourselves when we start writing to a specific sound and remind ourselves that the original songs didn't come from that place.

“Originally, we were just writing together and seeing what happened – and I think we want to hold onto that. We have an acoustic guitar and lots of harmonies so we know that we're always going to get handed those kind of folk/indie-folk titles, but we're definitely trying to keep a step out of that world. When we started, there were heaps of folk bands. We're trying to push more of the indie side than the folk side, if that makes sense.

“Fleetwood Mac is our fallback, when we look at our sound,” Collins reflects, before laughing again. “Still, if they came around today, everyone would probably call them indie-folk too. Who knows, really? We're really proud of this new EP. We took it in more of a band direction and I think that's really where we want to go in the future.”

Tigertown will be playing the following shows:

Saturday 24 November - Oxford Art Factory, Sydney NSW
Friday 7 December - Spectrum, Sydney NSW
Monday 10 December - Dusk Festival, Melbourne VIC
Friday 14 December - Toff In Town, Melbourne VIC
Saturday 15 December - Oxford Art Factory, Sydney NSW
Sunday 16 December - The Loft, Gold Coast QLD
Monday 17 December - Sol Bar, Maroochydore QLD
Tuesday 18 December - Old Museum, Brisbane QLD
Saturday 29 December to Tuesday 1 January - Peats Ridge Music & Arts Festival, Peats Ridge NSW