Easy Tiger, the electrifying new collaboration between Ian Siegal and Johnny Mastro, bursts from the speakers with an authenticity that hits you right from the start. This 13-track album slams edgy blues-rock into a lived-in groove, like a gritty, sweat-soaked hug you didn’t realize you were craving. Siegal’s guitar, the perfect counterpart to Mastro’s harmonica, rips through the air with the kind of snarling distortion that calls to mind the soul-drenched grit of late-night AM radio.
It’s a project that feels fated, yet completely unplanned. “This record wasn’t something we schemed,” Mastro recalls. “We were just talking online. I needed something new, Ian needed something new… and then it clicked. We threw around ideas, shared clips, and built the songs bit by bit before Ian came over from the UK about six months later.” Recorded live and nearly untouched by overdubs, Easy Tiger channels the spirit of a mid-’50s blues record, but with the sonic firepower of today. If Jon Spencer’s Blues Explosion had crashed into Chess Records in 1956, they’d barely scratch the surface of this record’s raw intensity.
The album was crafted with a minimalist, old-school philosophy: straight to analog tape, with only a few touches of polish. “We wanted to make a blues album that felt real,” Mastro says. “There’s a studio in New Orleans packed with retro gear from the ’40s and ’50s. Using that equipment felt like the most natural way to capture the sound.” And so they did, capturing the grit and soul of the moment with minimal interference. Nearly every track is a live take, reflecting the pure, unvarnished chemistry between Siegal and Mastro.
Diving headfirst into a timewarp of modern blues, Easy Tiger is raucous and unrelentingly soulful – exactly the kind of blues we need for these strange times.
