Tiger! Tiger!

Buffi Aguero shuns the name brands when working her rock gig

It’s 11 o’clock on a weeknight and Tiger! Tiger! vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Buffi Aguero isn’t concocting some hot new noir-garage rock anthem for her band. No, she’s (gasp) working. “Yeah, isn’t it sad,” she laughs. “I started my own company so I wouldn’t have to work for ‘The Man,’ and now I’m busier than ever.”

??
Her company, founded with old friend Tracy Wagner, is called Tweet Design and the two graphic artists shoulder an enviable workload, producing a host of cool imagery for a myriad of clients. Her visual concepts and her considerable recorded output bristles with the same witty and literate touch – an ongoing trademark of her series of well-received bands.

??
“I don’t really think of what to call what we do, especially now in Tiger! Tiger!” she says. “It’s all ‘rock music,’ whatever that is anymore, so why limit it?” The decidedly hard-to-label music on the band’s new album, The Kind of Goodnight, continues its fascination with edgy subject matter, presented in a distinctive guitar- and keyboard-propelled package that belies the intentionally sketchy, often ominous subject matter.

??
“Like on the title track of the new record,” she explains, “It’s kind of about the Immaculate Conception. It has this desperate character, and to me that’s Mary. I don’t know how to talk about it, other than to say I like allegorical songs and art.”

??
The medicine bottle on the cover of the new release is another of Aguero’s metaphors. “Music is almost this snake oil that I have to market,” she says. “I can really relate to the medicine man or the Fuller Brush man, you know? After it’s written and recorded or drawn or whatever, then you’re trying to sell this product. And that’s the hardest part.”

??
Tiger! Tiger! celebrates The Kind of Goodnight 9:30 p.m. Fri., Aug. 24, at the Earl. $8. 404-522-3950. www.badearl.com.