"I fear being too specific and dread coming
off as a showoff. Does that make sense?" Meet Rasmus Kellerman.
This is the guy behind Tiger Lou. It's a band; for all intents
and purposes, he's the band. He writes the songs, plays and
produces them. For now. Kellerman will tell you not to look
too close at "just an indie band, like many other indie bands,
with a big heart." But not listening closely to Tiger Lou
would be to sell it short. The Loyal, the band's second album,
is on the surface, just music. A bunch of songs written by
some guy from Oxelösund, Sweden. Only these tunes
breathe - they're dynamic, alive. Straight from the heart
of some guy now living in Stockholm. And he wouldn't say
the band had heart if, to some extent, he wanted you to know
the music was sincere.
Eeeewwww. Sounds mushy. Fake. How many times have you heard
the word sincere-or genuine-in a bio? That's the go-to adjective
for the self-contained acts: singer-songwriters, one-man
bands. These words, this bio-speak, is as trite and cheap
as "I love you" at last call. So here's the music. Thirteen
atmospheric, incorporeal (but alive) tracks that, if you
put them under a microscope, would reveal a molecular pattern
(and movement) identical to Kellerman's. Maybe that's why
he'd like you to look plainly upon his work: he's already
seen himself at such a high magnification-a potentially painful
zoom into who and what he is, and where he came from. Oxelösund,
we know is Kellerman's birthplace. He arrived in the small
harbor town on his mother's birthday, 1980. Life there was "easy
peasy Japanese-y. I skateboarded most of the time, not caring
for anything besides that." In 1990 the Kellermans relocated
to Nyköping, "a very normal town" of 50,000 residents
where Rasmus attended "a normal school." During this time,
Rasmus' older brother and sister hipped him to Slowdive,
Depeche Mode, The Cure, Kraftwerk, My Bloody Valentine, Swervedriver,
Skinny Puppy. A year later, Rasmus and a friend formed The
Womb, releasing a demo tape called Ovulation. "For being
the novelty work of one 11- and one 12-year-old, it's ain't
all that bad," Kellerman recalls.
In 1994, Kellerman discovered the harsher punk and hardcore
sounds of Swedish bands Refused, Randy and Shreadhead. He
calls this the biggest musical epiphany of his life. That
summer, he stage-dove for the first time, found fanzines
and millions of new bands - then started a fanzine of his
own, SpinSign. He started booking shows, formed and broke-up
numerous bands. Of his prior bands, he says EM is the only
one that matters. Later called Music By EM, the band asked
Kellerman to be its bassist in 1996. Before the first practice,
the vocalist is fired and Kellerman is asked to sing. It
worked out; by 1997 Music by EM had a publishing deal with
Universal Publishing. The band dropped out of high school,
moved to a big house in Stockholm, and worked toward its
first record deal (Sony, in 1999) and completed an album
(to date unreleased). Kellerman quit music. "I concentrated
on love," he says. "I moved to London to be with my present
wife. And I was working shit jobs-bus boy, hair salon receptionist,
juice-maker, etc." During this seemingly idle time, a friend
found a live acoustic recording Kellerman made shortly after
the break-up. He suggested making a three-song seven-inch,
to which Kellerman agreed. He chose the name Tiger Lou from
a Jet Li film called Fong Sai Yuk. "The rest, as they say,
is history."
The Loyal joins the personal, introspective element of one
with the sonically expressive traits of the other, and incorporates
the spunk of some of Kellerman's punk influences, to create
songs that are molecularly and musically unique. "The Loyal" pulses
insistently, muted acoustic strumming locked in with marching
4/4 drums beneath Kellerman's subdued but burdened vocals.
He questions the merits of sightless loyalty in what might
be construed as the voice of young soldiers facing deployment.
The song maintains this tense, hypnotic groove for much of
its 5:35 running time-even through the comparatively bright
chorus and, as with the sentiments expressed therein, does
not resolve to anything but taut, catatonic resignation.
The New Order-esque "Patterns" asks us to interpret "the
marks on me," referring perhaps to a palm-reading, where
Kellerman wants to know the details and also hopes to revise
them. Henceforth, the story finds our hero desiring to know
his "Function" in this mortal coil; pledging not to stop
searching "Until I'm There." Henceforth are more promises,
some mention of his own blood, and the realization that whatever
we've found, we've brought on ourselves-and what matters
is what was there all along. Again, probably too deep an
analysis for one who has already done the introspective equivalent
of staring into the sun.
We haven't even mentioned that Tiger Lou played 250 gigs
throughout Sweden and Germany in the past three years. And
they've sold around 50,000 records worldwide between two
albums (Is My Head Still On? was released in ten countries
in 2004), one EP (Trouble and Desire came out in '03 and
resulted in a month-long U.S. tour) and several singles and
seven-inches. There's also the Swedish Grammy nomination
(for Best Video), a Best New Act nod at the Manifest awards
(an indie version of the Grammys). Or that The Loyal was
produced and mixed by producer/mixer Peter Katis (Interpol,
Denali, The Dylan Group, The National).
"Sure, Tiger Lou has done some stuff worth mentioning," says
Kellerman. "But... let's just concentrate on what it is,
and not what we want it to be." Other than the indie/big
heart thing, his list is simple: 1. Tiger Lou is a solo project,
2. Tiger Lou is a four-piece live band. That's mostly his
brain talking. The band with heart says, "I just want to
affect people. Hit them in the guts, but make them wanna
dance at the same time. I wanna present Tiger Lou as a very
personal thing. That's why I do all my own design work. That's
why I try to respond to all the guestbook entries. To make
people feel like I'm there, you know? It's not just some
band, it's a real person behind it all‚ a person that
is within reach." |
