Toy Tiger Meow Sabotage LP
TOY TIGER, a DIY five-piece from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, dish out ’70s glam- and Oi!-influenced street rock built around steady, down-the-middle playing and explicitly anti-racist, anti-authoritarian, pro-LGBTQ2+ lyrics. Meow Sabotage, their second full-length, sticks to that formula and spends most of its time parked in the same mid-tempo lane. The overall effect reminded me more of ’80s L.A. sleaze rock—like they could have opened for FASTER PUSSYCAT on the Strip—than T. REX’s shimmer. Nothing here knocked me sideways, and a lot of the tracks blur together, but Bugsy Faithfull’s vocals were a standout, shifting between a controlled street punk snarl and a ’50s-tinged Danzig croon. I have a feeling these songs hit harder when you’re shoulder-to-shoulder in a bar, singing along and getting swept up in the message with the people around you.