Tiny Fighter – Going Home

By RingMaster Review on June 3, 2020 • ( 0 )

photo by Marcos Engman (aka Mecno)

From a chance meeting to deliberate collaboration and a moment of pure captivation; that is the emergence of Tiny Fighter and their debut album, Going Home. To be fair it is another bewitching affair with the band with a previous EP already enslaving a great many but definitely the most enthralling adventure with them yet.

Stockholm based, Tiny Fighter grew out of an unintentional meeting between Therese Karlsson (a truck driver from Kalmar, Sweden) and Tim Spelman (a doctor from Melbourne, Australia) in 2017. Soon the pair were creatively united, a link up which bore the acclaimed Tell Me EP two years later, recorded with legendary multi-Grammy, Gold & Platinum Award producer Thomas ‘Plec’ Johansson, and the following Reworks remix EP. Well-received singles and The Loft Sessions (Live in New York) encounter have marked the past couple of years as well as their magnetic live presence which has seen tours across the likes of Ireland, Latvia, Serbia and Scandinavia. Going Home has emerged from over 12 months of recording and sees the band expand their indie pop bred songwriting into a richer and fuller embrace of sound. So often across their first album, it is as haunting a proposal as a hungrily catchy affair, compelling shadows and dark dwelling emotions colluding with the lively imagination and instinctive infectiousness of their creativity.

Going Home opens up with its title track, a shimmer of keys drawing ears into the radiance of Karlsson’s harmonic tones and the growing reflection and beauty of the song. In no time that virulent catchiness in their music is working its temptation but equally that fresh emotive and textural evolvement of their sound is hugging the imagination. Drama soaks every note and syllable, dexterity just as ripe in the enterprise of Karlsson and Spelman.

The striking start only continues through Strangest Thing, a recent single which calls on attention and imagination like a fusion of The Primitives, The Cranberries, and Sheryl Crow. There is eagerness to its persuasion which gets under the skin with increasing tenacity as the song rises from its gentle start to offer an irresistible swing so easy for the body to match.

Similarly Devotion is an insatiable slice of persuasion, its controlled but temptation loaded throes as addictive as the subsequent infection soaked eruptions that break, the track teasing with essences of early Pretenders and Metric across its unique body, while Happier casts a web of indie catchiness and atmospheric drama to just as potently seduce ears and an already greedy appetite for the release. So individual in character, both unite in sublimely captivating the imagination before Perfect Game simply seduced with its piano cast melancholy and vocal intimacy. It is an open heart which mesmerised and haunted beyond its presence.

The intensity of emotion which shapes the track is just as pungent within Rollercoaster, covering its contagion bearing walls and creative theatre of sound while Echo is a warm stroll wrapped in nineties indie catchiness but again a song that shapes the imagination with its emotive breath and dextrous touch. As all tracks, each revel in the vocal prowess of Karlsson and the musical invention of Spelman, the songwriting a reflection of their bold imaginations.

Emotion lines every aspect of the band’s album, Maybe an alignment of emotional sensitivity and rhythmic boldness wrapped in melodic intrigue. It is a track which just increased in potency and temptation by the listen, success similarly shared by the fascinating Stars and its addictive exploits. Again rhythms simply manipulate attention before sharing it with vocals and keys, each tapping into the song and listener’s heart, the track another major highlight of the album.

The album is completed by firstly the poignant almost harrowing Vessels and finally Hold On, a track just as moving within its energetic catchiness. Together they provide a fine end to an album we can only eagerly recommend. As Tiny Fighter grow and evolve their sound so the temptation escalates, Going Home the proof.

Going Home is out now via Bay Terrace Records; available @ https://tinyfighterz.bandcamp.com/album/going-home