Jaguar Love @ Siren Festival 2008

If you met me today, or only knew my musical taste from this website, then you would probably be surprised to know that I used to LOVE hardcore back in high school. Trust me, it’s true, even if I was only ever on the fringes of all that. As time went on, I learned that the things that really got me were great lyrics and a good tune. I’d always liked the more melodic hardcore anyway. The search for great lyrics led me away from hardcore and into indie, and now the closest I really get to that (other than the occasional old favorite) is what you might call post-hardcore, screamo, whatever – bands like Thursday or Refused.

You should also know that I really don’t like using genres.

All this is a really long way to go about saying that when I learned that Jaguar Love, a band with two of the former members of the Blood Brothers and one from Pretty Girls Make Graves, all I could think was, “I’m there!”

I was not disappointed. These guys rocked! There are a lot of similarities between them and the Blood Brothers, particularly because of Johnny Whitney’s voice, which Spin Magazine, in a unusally descriptive twist, calls that of a “deliriously deaf 12-year-old.”

The refreshing thing about seeing Jaguar Love is that they are straight-forward rock, something incredibly refreshing these days. You get a lot of guitars, some screaming, and a lot of energy.

They aren’t as heavy on the Casio keys as you’d expect, either.

All that energy meant the crowd broke the typical indie rock mode of standing, hands crossed, nodding along to the music and moved around, despite standing up all day in the Coney Island sun. People love to rock.