Singer-Songwriter Jenna Fournier Explores 'Softer Side' for Kid Tigrrr's Debut

The pandemic wiped out the plans that the local dream pop band Niights had in 2020. The group released the LP Hellebores that year, but when touring ground to a halt, the band spent the time writing new material instead of hitting the road to support the album. Singer Jenna Fournier took online classes and learned about audio engineering and recording. The group also split with its U.S. and Japanese labels.

“We had a lot of stuff in motion,” says Fournier one recent afternoon from Civilization, the coffee house located in Tremont. During the downtime, Fournier also revisited her backlog of songs and realized she had enough material for a solo album. Those songs will make up the material on Stoned + Animald , the debut from a project she's dubbed Kid Tigrrr. Kid Tigrrr plays a release party on Saturday, Sept. 7, at the Transformer Station. Brent Kirby and Benjamin Liar will perform as well.

“I wanted to experiment without having to pass the songs through Niights,” she says. “I felt like I needed an outlet for the stuff that didn’t make sense for Niights. It’s an outlet for the softer side of my writing, I guess.”

While it’s not a concept album per se, Stoned + Animald addresses issues of mental health and recovering from abuse in several songs. Fournier recorded most of the music at her home.

“It was awesome to record at home,” she says. “I started recording the next one at home already. And when I write for other people or do backing vocals, a lot of that is now recorded at home too. I set up a corner that works pretty well. I will say with this new record when I got to the point that I wanted to add live drums, that’s when I took it to the studio and worked with [producer] Jim Wirt [Incubus, Fiona Apple]. I tracked live drums with him in the studio. He mixed it for me as well.”

Fournier says the album title alludes to the Bob Dylan tune “Rainy Day Women #12 and #35,” which she has previously covered on a single.

“'Stoned' is a metaphor for judging in that Bob Dylan song," she says. “I really liked that. After I did the cover, that’s when the album title came to me. 'Animald' is a way to reference survival mode. It’s one of the themes in the old songs. Everyone was in this survival mode during the pandemic. People start hoarding and getting selfish. It’s alluding to the survival mode of the time when this album was made.”

The single "Shapes of Water" began as an official pedal demo for locally based EarthQuaker Devices and layers intricate guitar lines and textures. Reverend Guitars liked it so much that it gave Fournier an endorsement deal.

"I wrote that piece for EarthQuaker’s pedal, and it was undeveloped,” she says. “They used it to demo their pedal. It got a lot of positive feedback. I knew I had something special, and I just kept developing it. It became this hypnotic seven-minute piece of music. It's the first one I started working with home production. It’s an early nugget. It’s one of my favorite pieces, but it’s definitely not the most accessible.”

The album’s second single, the dreamy, Cocteau Twins-like "Scry," references the Slowdive tune "Machine Gun.”

“I didn’t do that intentionally,” says Fournier. “I listened to Slowdive a lot, and I am sure it’s in the background. I sent the song to Neil Halstead from Slowdive through Instagram, and he responded. I offered songwriting credit or to take it out. He said it was fine and that he thought it was a cool track.”

Five years ago, Fournier got in touch with Smashing Pumpkins singer-guitarist Billy Corgan, who was soliciting cameos from other musicians. That musical relationship has blossomed, and he recently recruited Fournier to sing backup on the band's upcoming album, Aghori Mhori Mei, and shouted out her third single, "Skin," in an interview in the British paper The Guardian . The song garnered attention from around the globe for its "universally relatable message of reclaiming one's sense of self."

Stoned + Animald arrives on digital platforms Sept. 6. The release party at the Transformer Station will include a concert and painting exhibit, and the live performance, which will feature real-time looping and pedal tweaking, will also include projections of Fournier's own animation and experimental video art.

“For the release party, I wanted an environment that’s more of an art setting,” she says. “Cleveland lacks art and music environments that are listening rooms. I like playing bars and clubs, but I want to create events that aren’t centered around alcohol sales but around art, music and immersive environments.”
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