Tiger Trap (album)

Tiger Trap is the only album released by the band Tiger Trap. It was released in 1993 on K Records and was produced by Calvin Johnson. With about 10,000 copies sold, it was K Records' best-selling album until they released Beck's One Foot in the Grave the following year.

Composition
Along with twee pop, Tiger Trap is musically aligned with "energetic" indie pop and "romantic" punk-pop.

Critical reaction
The Chicago Tribune opined that "terrific three-part harmonies and a brace of killer melodies make Tiger Trap one of the year's more consistently pleasurable albums."

In 2014, Andrew Earles called the album "quintessential", and wrote that Tiger Trap "packed each song with at least one pop hook."

Legacy and impact
Retrospectively, Tiger Trap has been held up as one of twee pop's most essential releases. In an 2005 essay called "Twee as Fuck", Pitchfork's Nitsuh Abebe "highly recommended" the album and highlighted two of its tracks, "Puzzle Pieces" and "My Broken Heart". In 2014, The A.V. Club's Paula Mejia dubbed it a "Possible gateway" into the genre. The following year, the site's Jason Heller wrote that the album "embodies twee," but added that "it’s also a forceful, potent, consummately melodic complement to the more strident sounds of riot grrrl that were raging around them at the time."

On a 2013 Complex list, Trap placed No. 40 out of indie rock's 50 best albums of the 1990s. Writer Philip Cosores saw its impact carry into numerous later groups like Allo Darlin', Veronica Falls, Colleen Green and Swearin'. Writing for The Stranger in 2016, Sean Nelson credited it with "set[ting] the aesthetic standard for NW indie pop forever after."

Track listing

 * 1) "Puzzle Pieces"
 * 2) "You're Sleeping"
 * 3) "Eight Wheels"
 * 4) "Supercrush"
 * 5) "Tore a Hole"
 * 6) "Words and Smiles"
 * 7) "For Sure"
 * 8) "You and Me"
 * 9) "Supreme Nothing"
 * 10) "Chester"
 * 11) "My Broken Heart"
 * 12) "Prettiest Boy"