Tiger Bear Wolf (album release) w/ The Bronzed Chorus

This record shouldn’t exist. But somehow after 17 years it does. Tiger Bear Wolf’s third self-titled LP completes a trilogy begun decades ago. This record shouldn’t exist, but It had to…

Formed in the summer of 2002, Greensboro NC’s Tiger Bear Wolf emerged from the fetid wastes of the Piedmont to make their prints across the United States. The quartet of Jonathan Moore (guitar, vocals), Noah Howard (guitar, vocals), Matt Bostick (bass) and Lawrence Holdsworth (drums) self-released their debut album in 2003 and found refuge alongside fellow truth seekers Hello Sir Records of Athens, GA for their second LP in 2005. Twisted riffs of southern rock, fed on a steady diet of hardcore and psychedelic post-punk all filtered into their raw recordings and pummeling live shows. Relentless touring followed, that both sharpened senses and dwindled accounts, and the four entered a prolific creative period penning music for what would be their third album.

Basic tracks for the third Tiger Bear Wolf album were recorded in 2009 between the sweltering heat of a collective performance space and an attic bedroom. It was there the trail went cold. Time and distance intervened, and hard drives gradually succumbed to devilry and malign influences. The record was lost, said to be unrecoverable, and the story was over. Fast forward to 2015, where a savior emerged to retrieve the lost data, almost completely intact from its silicon sarcophagus against moonshot odds. Just for the love and belief that there was something worth saving.

In the years that followed, these tracks took on a new life as guitars and voices were recorded in various states and hideaways with members now located in Greensboro, Louisville and Baltimore. What was nearly lost to the sands of time oozed vitality under the careful watch of the band and it’s enablers at both Howard’s Calogera Audio and producer Joel Hatstat’s Athens, GA studio . After 16 years of patient labor, doubt, hope, fellowship, inspiration, invention, revelation, and faith the long lost Tiger Bear Wolf record was somehow completed. The document finds the group at the full breadth of maturity and creativity for the time of its recording, while also fully colored by perspectives and techniques developed in the succeeding years. What we have here is the music as it was meant to be heard, fully realized with power and subtlety, the heart, tongue, and fang.