Upcoming Releases

Following the release of 2023’s Smalltown Stardust, King Tuff, the moniker of Burlington, Vermont artist Kyle Thomas, found himself a bit lost. He had felt lost since 2016. Both Smalltown Stardust and 2018’s The Other had been departures from his sound, and while they were both new sonic places that he needed to explore, neither album felt all that fun to perform live. Every show he would just be looking forward to playing his older, wilder material. So when he decided to make a new record, it only seemed right to go back to what has always brought him the most joy, Rock & Roll music.

MOO, King Tuff’s sixth full-length album, due March 27 via his new label MUP Records via Thirty Tigers, is a return to form for Thomas in many ways. He moved back to Vermont, used the same tape machine, a Tascam 388, that he used to record his debut album, King Tuff Was Dead, and played his old, blue, Gibson SG. He even made a physical newspaper that comes with every copy of the album, The Daily Moo.

The first song he recorded for it was “Twisted On A Train”, the album’s opening track and lead single released today alongside a video directed, shot and edited by Thomas himself. The track is about taking an overnight train from Tucson to Los Angeles, eating a weed gummy, freaking out and staying up all night in the observation car.

“I wrote and recorded the whole dang song in the span of a few hours, which was basically the opposite of how I had been working in the computer. Spending hours moving waveforms around like a zombie, comping vocals, second guessing, trying to make things sound not lifeless, trying to make anything sound good at all, took months. But here on the tape it was so much more alive. More like painting or collaging. More like making actual music. Every move I made stuck like super glue. It was effortless. It was pure joy,” he says.

“I stopped caring if there were mistakes. There’s not enough mistakes. I wish it sounded even worse. Rock & Roll is the music of rodents and bugs. It should sound like it crept from a decrepit trashcan or a crypt or a toilet. It is not chill or vibey, autotuned or on the grid. It is not perfect, which is why it’s perfect. And I don’t care if it’s dead or alive, cool or uncool: when I hear it, and when I play it, as a chubby and balding 43 year old punk weirdo, I FEEL ENERGIZED,” he continues.

A few months before starting MOO, Thomas fell in love. So, MOO is mostly love songs, with the exception of a song about the aforementioned rodents and a song about getting an oil change. But those are actually love songs too.

All in all, MOO is a full circle moment. A return to form. A return to rock. A return to Vermont. A return to himself. Reconnecting the dots. Restarting the engine. Plugging in the stack. Finally letting King Tuff be King. Fucking. Tuff.

MOO track listing:

1. Twisted On A Train
2. Stairway To Nowhere
3. Invisible Ink
4. Landline
5. Crosseyed Critters
6. Oil Change
7. East of Ordinary
8. Unglued
9. Delusions
10. Backroads