Gray Waves, the debut LP from Athens, Georgia-based nu-gazers Twin Tigers, was released on iTunes last week. From the first blistering moments of Automatic, Waves’s first single, the band had my attention. The two-and-a-half-minute track, which pounds away with vicious fury from its opening guitar burst to its last shredding moments, recalls everything you ever loved about Sonic Youth and The Jesus and Mary Chain. From Youth’s fuzz-bomb guitar antics to Mary Chain’s eerie, down-tempo psychedelics, Twin Tigers hits all the right notes and wastes no time in doing so. “This is the change of our times / I guess it’s automatic” singer Matthew Rain croons through the grinding noise that makes his lyrics often barely decipherable. But that won’t matter. With Automatic, Twin Tigers busts out with both guns blazing, rising to the challenge set before them by fellow Athens-grown acts like Bubba Sparxxx and Of Montreal. With Gray Waves, the band may just have laid a challenge of their own. Download Automatic at www.tinyurl.com/ttautomatic

Published in Volume 64, Number 23 of The Uniter (March 18, 2010)