King Tuff

King Tuff is singer-songwriter Kyle Thomas, who currently focuses on creating lovely lo-fi pop pieces with strong psychedelic undercurrents. By contrast, he spent the first phase of his career playing garage rock that stayed close to the sound of the mid to late '60s when early glam and early psychedelic were wrapped up into one big ball of yarn and the distance between Mark Bolan (of T. Rex) and Rocky Erickson (of The 13th Floor Elevators) was less than a short hop. He gradually started to crank up the volume, began shredding more loudly on the guitar, and moved towards a harder glam meets classic rock'n roll sound. But then, an abrupt change came on 2018's The Other, where Thomas pretty much slammed the brakes, toned it down significantly, and began to place more emphasis on the melodic nature of his songs, which is when today's kinder mellower King Tuff came to be.