The Lynn-based rockers are back to their rocking, rabble-rousing ways and this time, they’re inviting the whole world to join in.
“Collective and simplistic group noise expression is our main weapon of spiritual survival in a world run by a murderous cabal of thieving bastards” reads Tigerman Woah’s Facebook page. The Lynn-based Americana band has “been singing and hollering and stomping their working-class boots since 2012″ and the band’s latest EP, Do It All Again, continues the band’s crusade against the bourgeoisie, albeit with more urgency this time, given the current political—and environmental—climate.
It would be difficult to find a more suitable voice for revolution than the gravelly bellow of lead singer Adam Kazynski—who sounds like Tom Waits’ pirate persona, had he wandered too far from the beach and found himself on a communal farm. His vocals juxtapose the band’s inclusion of more folky instruments (such as banjolele and upright bass), and Kazynyski subverts expectations of bluegrass and folk as being soft, delving into the genres’ historical origins as Reconstruction Period hymns. Sometimes, the band even looks the part.
Whereas the band’s primary motives for artistic insurgence often revolved around proletariat discontent on previous albums, Do It All Again suggests an openness to collective vigilance between divergent classes in order to combat overarching threats to society such as climate change. Kazynski sings on album opener “Count Me In:” “Six storms, and an earthquake / Last summer, oh how we baked / This winter, it’s even colder / Another storm, our city’s in the ocean.” Ultimately, he connects natural plights to economic disparity: “Four profits, lousy fishing / Got three jobs ‘cause no fair pay / Two cars but no more roadways / One problem, rather ignore it / You want to live, now you got to show it.” Yet, the band remains steadfast in their belief that cooperative insurgence and awareness of privilege can overcome disastrous consequences: “We are the storm, we make the earth quake / Four our lives make no mistake / We must win, out of options / Two sides, one revolution.” The song dually serves as a declaration of participation in the uprising and an enumerative play on words in allusion to the song’s name.
The album’s next two songs lack the same gravity or cleverness of “Count Me In.” “Devil” is a blues song that revolves around a classic blues trope—hedonistically selling your soul to the devil. “Factory Boys” offers more lyrically, telling stories of addiction in working-class towns on top of Lynyrd Skynyrd-sounding guitars. The title track on the other hand, “Do It All Again,” creatively reconstructs notions of patriotism by celebrating groups that dared to challenge authority, from the New Jewel Movement to the Black Panthers, over a country tune. These songs reveal the band’s ability to switch genres with ease, at the risk of sounding hackneyed, but also with the possibility of breaking new ground.
The album’s finale, “The World is Burning,” is a blast—no pun intended. Were an apocalypse to come—if it already hasn’t—there’s no better way to go out than drunkenly singing a song with your friends that’s about getting drunk with your friends. It serves as the apex of Do It Again while simultaneously affirming Tigerman Woah’s ethos: create art like your life depends on it, and if you do it well, it just might.