By Tim Ubels (Contributor) – Email
Print Edition: July 18, 2012
King Tuff’s self-titled sophomore record, now out on Sub Pop, includes a tongue-in-cheek press release from producer Bobby Harlow. He states, “King Tuff should not be inspected or even listened to with critical ears. Cut your ears off. Rock & Roll is meant to be blasted into your cells, penetrated, and absorbed. It’s a visceral experience. Seek solace in solitude when you’re dead. If you aren’t able to recognize the genius in this epic album, then you’re already dead. Kill yourself. Or get a job. Your choice.”
This offbeat press release leaves a bit of a sour taste in the mouths of the self-appointed few whose job it is to endorse and encourage others to listen to the band’s music through blog, magazine and newspaper reviews like this one. While I can empathize with the anti-critic attitude, biting the hand that feeds is a bizarre move to make, especially for an emerging act, but then again, King Tuff is a bizarre side project.
Heading into this record, I expected the music to have strong lyrics and fresh guitar riffs, especially considering the choice words contained in the press release, and I wasn’t disappointed. King Tuff has a seamless quality to it, as the songs all lead into, set up and reference each other with a definite anachronistic feel. Whether this is due to intentional lo-fi production or financial restrictions, the songs have a certain primitiveness indicative of a bygone period of rock and roll.
Vermont-bred Kyle Thomas, the driving force behind the three-piece stoner garage-rock group, finds himself in unfamiliar territory on this record. The prolific Thomas, who uses projects like Gnomesong and Witch as outlets for his folk and metal urges, combines the power pop overtones of Free Energy and the greasy production of Husker Du with his own healthy dose of loud guitars.
King Tuff contains some standout tracks, like its opener “Anthem,” which not only packs a punch but drools fuzz guitar. There’s also a great garage rock banger in “Bad Things,” one of the best singles of 2012 that contains his familiar growling guitars, but with a Scooby Doo chase scene undertone. Thomas spends most of the track musing over his bad boy image, treading his feelings between boredom and self-loathing.
“Unusual World” is a mid-tempo track that showcases Thomas’ most clever songwriting, “You wanna always erase / The imperfect in your beautiful face / And you think about the time you waste / In this impossible place.” The album’s standout tracks are those that stretch beyond Thomas’s male posturing, come-ons and the subtext of everyday life.
Rock and roll is meant to be fun, and there shouldn’t be much room left on a record for miserable or serious tones or lyrical themes, and Thomas reminds us of this fact. This is where the value of Harlow’s press release starts to take shape. King Tuff is not a record to be studied, critiqued or reflected upon the way a professor grades a final essay; it’s a record to be enjoyed at the listener’s leisure without any need for overanalyzing. Critical deconstruction after all, isn’t much fun. All hail the King, as long as he remembers his loyal subjects have feelings too.
