It’s hard to talk honestly about rock and roll music. This has always been the case.
It’s an inherently silly thing, rock and roll, and that was part of the initial allure. Just how silly it was and remains, compared to other music. Just how ridiculous. Whereas once upon a time music in the Western tradition was a cared-for art practiced by a skilled very few, symphonies and sonatas written by geniuses who understood how to transpose emotion into melody, rock music (and its progenitors, folk and the blues) brought everything down to regular people, so that they, too, might enjoy themselves. So that normal folks would actually understand what they were hearing, and relate to it.
Too many people who like talking about rock, and who do their level best to talk what they feel is honestly about it, disregard this fact. They also disregard how young this music is, and they take it way too fucking seriously. There’s a strain of criticism that seeks not to acknowledge the joyful aspects of this noisy rejoinder so much as, even if subconsciously, belittle it. Put the critic above it. Describe this crazy shit from a comfortable remove. Frame it only as an industry or movement full of actors and fads, and not that self-same something ridiculous, that foolish noise setting a stage on which regular people enjoy themselves.
Certain artists, however, by virtue of their adherence to those initial principles, end up resisting critical judgment altogether. In embracing foolishness and courting the ridiculous, some artists rise above a close inspection. Render it unnecessary.
King Tuff is one such artist.
His latest record, Black Moon Spell, succeeds mightily by letting people like me who’d like to listen to it with a critical ear know we’re more than welcome to fuck off a mountaintop. Track after track layers noisy, messy business on top of noisy, messy business. Up-tempo major key rockers keep the mood high and the vibe percolating, and in their insistence remind the listener that this genre, first and foremost, is here to be enjoyed.
And, by extension: that life is to be lived.
This particular rock contains dashes of Detroit, splashes of psych, hints of punk, flirtations with weird folk, brief acknowledgements of surf, and an almost maniacal adherence to the groove of seventies radio rock. Solos aren’t particularly fluid, the production is by no means spotless. The leering come-ons are abundant, but the point is that they rhyme, and what’s more they’ll WORK on a certain kind of girl.
More to the point: no one’s going to write a dissertation on this motherfucker, but then again no one will have to. This is not music that presupposes you’re interested in thinking about what someone else (i.e. me) presupposes what King Tuff’s intentions were when he threw a guitar over his shoulder, fucked around and found a riff, hashed out a beat to go with it, scribbled some words that rhymed, and then pressed record.
Instead, this is music that presupposes you are a human with a heart rate that goes up and down based on how excited you become by available stimuli; that you enjoy rock and roll music for what it is; and also that you like being in rooms with other people in which a band is playing, jumping up and down, getting sweaty, maybe drinking, maybe trying to find somebody that wants to fuck later, but more than anything else having a good time listening to music. Responding to it. Letting your brain fill with sound that makes you feel like your best self because when you do so that’s what you become.
Do you like Sabbath? King Tuff does, and he wrote a song called “Headbanger” about falling in love with a girl because she also likes Black Sabbath. And Judas Priest. And leather jackets. He wrote a one-minute acoustic song about loving a girl who is ugly because she is ugly. It’s called “I Love You Ugly”. He also wrote a couple riff-rock tunes that will make your brain stem cum. In short, this shit rocks.
And who gives a fuck what more I or anyone else has to say about it? Find it, buy it, and listen to it, before it’s too late. Anything else you read about King Tuff’s Black Moon Spell is a waste of your time. Life is for the living. Go be among them.
Rating: 4.5/5