By Brian Tucker

Tigger Clarkson has been working for some time on a new EP. Clarkson’s not slacking, he’s got a day job, but the amount of time relates to challenging himself.

“The process was a little different this time around,” Clarkson said. “I made a decision, in the pursuit continuous improvement and the desire to learn more, to do everything myself on these tracks.”

In the last year he’s been posting a song here and there, culminating in three tracks for an EP called Testarossa. He wrote, performed, recorded and mixed everything in a studio he built several years ago. Prior to this EP he completed a full band album called Patience, Rhythm, & Symmetry.

Working alone meant learning to do a lot of things on his own. This resulted in a lot on the cutting room floor in order “to get what I heard in my head.” Listening to the songs it sounds like he burned everything to the ground to start over. These are three catchy, solid songs that feel different than the full band album.

The newest track is “The River” and stacked against the previous two – “The Cut” and “No Good & Never Gonna Change” it stands to reason that the process has worked. The songs have different personalities, as if pulled from different albums. If his studio is a mad laboratory then trial and error, and a little madness, is working.

While Clarkson maintains swagger and soul throughout the songs, they are built around different frameworks. If each song is a sports car then they are sports cars from different companies. “No Good & Never Gonna Change” combines punchy rhythms with sultry atmosphere. “The Cut” fuses rising and descending guitar work with tense urgency while the vocals illustrate Clarkson’s strengths.

“The River” is stark material lyric-wise, but the see-sawing guitar work and punchy percussion makes for an R&B laced rock tune. It’s suitable for a dance floor, just one from another period of time.

“There are many finished and partially finished songs from this project that will never be heard, but they all taught me something and ultimately led to three songs I’m pretty proud of,” Clarkson said. “Not sure if it’s the best way to make music, but I learn through practical application so it pushed me to get better in a lot of areas.”

Check out the songs below or via SoundCloud.