"We love loops." This is the most important and thoroughly unnecessary statement secretive dance duo Tiger & Woods said in what is one of the few interviews they've given to date. Because listening to their debut album, Through the Green, it is blindingly, stupidly obvious that they love loops. Though they belong to a tradition of disco and funk edits that dates back to the early 1980s (a tradition that saw a major revival in the last half-decade), they've essentially applied power pop's maxims-- all the good stuff, over and over again-- to their source material. Instead of economical verses and choruses, they offer two- and three-second cuts of classic boogie. The resulting tracks shun subtlety and build, instead aiming to fill every available space with curlicues of melody and rhythm.
The tracks on Through the Green are long-- really long, often eclipsing eight minutes-- but they don't offer narcotic repetition. Tiger & Woods differentiate themselves from a lot of ace editors because they don't ever want you to "lose yourself" in the track; they want to share these wonderful little slivers they've excised. Slivers so wonderful, in fact, that they want to share them over and over again. If a peer like the excellent Mark E is searching for disco's negative space, Tiger & Woods are amping up its most neon bits. (I find them more tractable and focused than the nonetheless wonderful Justin Vandervolgen and Dr. Dunks.)
The music is inherently social and gregarious; it's music that makes me want to be around people because it feels so generous. It's not a good-times party album so much as it's an album about the good times. Tiger & Woods seem uniquely concerned with those communal moments when the DJ finds the perfect pitch and groove, and Through the Green is their extended exploration of those highs. The album flatly ignores those periods during which the DJ is grasping or when disco spirals off into floral wanderlust. Its lack of emotional dynamics and its 80-minute runtime occasionally dull the festivities, but they never cheapen the blissful sonic moments the duo arrives at.
It helps that the lyrical themes that exist-- dance-y platitudes about love and heat, mostly-- never feel sexual or overbearing. The duo's best song-- a song I have can confidently call my favorite disco edit ever-- "Gin Nation", contorts Imagination's "Music & Lights" into a blissful, energetic whirl. The money line-- "Sequins and pearls/ And lots of pretty girls"-- is stretched to sound like "We got/ Plenty of girls," a goofy declaration of the party's success. The duo has called their sound "future boogie," but they only occasionally-- usually when working with the equally anonymous female vocalist 'Em-- wander into modern R&B, modern here meaning mid-80s Jam & Lewis. On the excellent "Curb My Heart", she navigates the duo's sardine-tight chord changes until she too is sampled and threaded into the pattern. They're impatient like this, never wanting to wait for the best parts to cycle through again. It's a childish impulse, in some ways, but one I understand fully.
Through the Green can scan as simple or nostalgic, but either misses the point (and neither is the album a "modern take" on disco). It's an album of execution, of Tiger & Woods sharing sounds that aren't elusive and chasing feelings that are. The core question is, "Can we have too much of a good thing?" and while I can convince myself the answer is probably "yes," I'm glad Tiger & Woods can't.
