- For those of you a little familiar with Melburnian folk / cabaret types The Tiger And Me but unfamiliar with their release schedule, their latest EP, The Silent City, might catch you a little off guard. It is the second of a set of three and where its predecessor, The Howling Fire, was all jumping up and dancing with big cabaret flare - the sound I most associate with the band - The Silent City does a sharp u-turn into the introspective, quiet and melancholy. It opens with the sad longing of single The Smoke. Ade Vincent paints a vivid picture of howling funeral pyres burning into the night and waiting endlessly for his girl, trapped by unspoken things and the inescapable complications of romance. He's joined by Jane Hendry singing the other half of this broken relationship, harmonising together but still apart and all the while accompanied by a drum beating a gentle march to the the end of love. Jane Hendry goes it alone on what I imagine will be the second single, Red Road. A piano driven, sparse and gently haunting song of midnight temptations, building to an increasingly roaring chorus '...it pulls me, like the moon pulls at the tide...', gripping stuff. I'm not sure I remember The Tiger And Me going a bit country before but Looking Around has that twang and is full of appropriately countryish anti-heroics and moral ambiguity. The Watchmaker reignites some of the cabaret fire which is otherwise in short supply here and even in this song is reasonably restrained. Love's a fire has some of the same with extra added menace, but mostly subsides into more of that country banjo, which is deceptively unthreatening before the queasy lurch of the chorus sets upon the listener again. Trick or Truce starts out as a bitter singer-songwriter piece, but is embellished with horns and oboe for a big ol' redemptive chorus to finish. The change of pace for the band is an interesting one and at times quite compelling, but when half of their repertoire, the half with all the fire and energy is mostly on vacation, there were moments I was left wondering if this wasn't a collection of b-sides. It'll be interesting to see quite where the third record goes and just how it unites this trilogy.

- Chris Cobcroft.