The Leeds Gig Guide

Band Biography for tigers that talked:

Tigers That Talked are a quartet hailing from assorted corners of the UK and Europe but currently based in Leeds, having gravitated towards the city’s current creative renaissance. The band have released a number of self-produced DIY EPs - available to fans at gigs and through their MySpace page - and are set to release their debut EP on UK label Bad Sneakers Records later this year.

The band was formed by singer-songwriter and guitarist Jamie Williams in 2006, and quickly drew around him the current line up of bassist Owain Kelly, half-Norwegian violinist Glenna Larsen, and drummer and percussionist Chris Verney.

The band create a multi-layered, intensely beautiful music that can be in turns euphoric, rousing and haunting. Focused around Jamie’s vocals, Glenna’s effect-adorned violin and coupled with the band’s frenzied live energy, Tigers That Talked create a music that, as one critic has said, sounds "vaguely of a piece with recent bands but not really immediately fitting in as The Next... anyone. There's hints of the Cure, Arcade Fire, Elbow and Ryan Adams...", and others have suggested is influenced as much by the filmic elegance of Ennio Morricone as the ramshackle folk rock of The Arcade Fire. In the process they combine pop hooks infectious enough to snag the mainstream with the laconic romanticism of folk, and create a genuinely fresh British sound in the process.

Debut EP “Some Sparrow’d Hill” will be released on Bad Sneakers in Autumn 2008, and the band are currently recording their debut album and emerging for the occasional gig. For music, pictures and more, check their MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/tigersthattalked/