I Get The Feeling Central
Tough Age (Mint)
The self-titled debut by Vancouver indie rockers Tough Age was a nice little surprise.
Comic book lover and band leader Jarrett K. Samson’s influences were worn right on the album’s sleeve: One collaged with various clippings from coming-of-age-comics. The album mixed lo-fi indie, surf rock, and old fashioned rock ’n’ roll with a Pixies twist in sturdy fashion. And the band was always a blast live.
After much rumouring about moves to Toronto and other departures, Tough Age make a return with another solid album, I Get The Feeling Central. Recruiting producer Felix Fung (Chains of Love, Needles//Pins, The Ballantynes) gives Tough Age a little more breathing room without losing the band’s retro-cool dynamics.
Opening track 50 Girls 50 is a rollicking surf-rocker with off-kilter drumming and furious strumming. Snakes & Ladders sees Tough Age continuing their mining of the Pixies/Black Francis dynamics, with plenty of handclaps. Flamenco Wiccan is definitely a change of pace for Tough Age, dropping a nifty psych rock nugget reminiscent of recent Deerhunter.
I Get The Feeling Central is more introspective than Tough Age’s debut, with Samson in self-reflexive mood on tracks like Flotsam, Guilt (“Someone’s in my thoughts again”) and the album closing title track, where Samson unleashes — as the Interweb would say — “all the feels.”
Spiffed up with a nice, shiny coating of reverb, I Get The Feeling Central will shake, rattle and roll its way into your ears. Play loud with the top down.
Tough Age perform at the Cobalt in Vancouver on July 3.