In preparation of his debut gig in Melbourne aboard the Bermuda Float, which will travel down the Yarra River, I ask garage popper King Tuff if he’s ever played on a boat before. His response was less than enthusiastic.
“I actually have, and it was a disaster,” says Kyle Thomas, the man behind the King Tuff moniker, reached on the phone from his Vermont home. “This was a show with my old band, Witch, maybe six years ago. I remember we could barely stand up throughout the whole show,” he adds.
You’d be hard pressed to find a band more suited for a boat party than King Tuff. Full of classically-influenced power-pop and straight up garage-rock bangers, King Tuff’s 2012 self-titled release maintains an intrinsic benevolent vibe that allows all your cares to, quite literally as is the case, float away. I mention to Thomas that his music does indeed seem made for autumn boat parties. This draws a chuckle from the perpetually relaxed Thomas. “I’ll rock any kind of vehicle of transportation,” he notes, somewhat sarcastically.
The carefree energy that Thomas exudes is a contagious one. King Tuff, his first release on Sub Pop garnered rave reviews from both fans and critics alike, and it’s easy to see why. Like the party-goer who keeps the energy at premium before quickly disappearing into the night, King Tuff is a contagious release. Thomas leaves the heady stuff for other rock’n’rollers, instead opening tracks like Alone & Stoned, one of the catchier numbers on King Tuff with: “There’s nothing better than alone and stoned/listening to music on your headphones.” Timeless and pleasantly simplistic, the prime focus of King Tuff’s seems to be its inherent need to be shared with friends. Thomas agrees and gives some insight into just where his bummer-free jams come from. “I think about when I was a teenager and I was making mix tapes for my friends. I think about what kind of songs my friends would’ve wanted to hear and I write songs like that.”
Friendship is such an important element of the King Tuff aesthetic that when our conversations turns to his influences, he’s quick to note that its his friends who provide most of his inspiration, musically. “My main influences are my friends’ bands, bands on Burger (Records, an independent label based in Fullerton, California that made their name releasing garage rock releases exclusively on tape and are re-releasing King Tuff’s debut, Was Dead), that kind of stuff. It’s my friends who influence a lot of what I do because they’re my contemporaries.”
Thomas’ friendship with Seth Bogart of Hunx And His Punx fame has been well-documented as well. “We haven’t seen each other in a long time,” he says, but not before listing off a few others bands. “But a lot of bands like White Fang, Gap Dream, Natural Child are important to me. They’re rock bands with a focus on good song-writing. And that’s my interest.”
With the garage-rock renaissance in full-swing and the hipsters flocking to any band that proliferates a sloppy, lo-fi production, King Tuff’s music has been lumped in with these artists, from time to time. Yet the production value on King Tuff is rather strong by comparison, highlighting Thomas’s keen sense of harmonies. So how does Thomas classify his music? “I always just say rock’n’roll. That’s the mother of all these genres. After a while they all start to sound the same to me. I really don’t hear that much of a difference between garage, power-pop, straight up rock’n’roll, whatever.”
Kyle Thomas can’t be bothered to lump his music into specific genres. He’ll have more pressing issues to deal with when he arrives in Australia like, most notably, keeping his balance while playing the Bermuda Float. Lucky for his fans, balance and maintaining a solid frame of mind both in his life and in his music is something Thomas specialises in. “The self-titled album definitely does have that vibe, the balance between rockers and slower songs, but I’m still a big fan of albums with one solid vibe. Something like The Ramones first album, where there’s just one consistent sound the whole way through. I think I’d like to make a record like that one day too.”
BY JOSHUA KLOKE
