Call the cacophonic rattle of MOO a return to form, if you like. Kyle Thomas, the rock preservationist known as King Tuff, would call it the same. As he writes in the album’s quasi-liner notes: “after years of confusion I felt like myself again. MOO made the conclusion that I was an elf again.”
Perhaps an odd turn of phrase for somebody who sounded positively besotted with the elvin Marc Bolan on his 2023 release Smalltown Stardust. Yet the fact remains: MOO finds Thomas getting back to where he once belonged, capturing a glorious noise at home on his eight-track. That’s how he made his blissfully fuzzed-out early records, albums that pushed him to the vanguard of the scuzzy garage-punk revivalists. When he left his native Vermont for the cinematic vistas of Los Angeles, he didn’t renounce those songs’ monumental crunch so much as built upon them. Discovering literal and metaphorical sunshine on the West Coast, King Tuff broadened his palette with a pair of records built on the softer side of psych.
He grew restless, though. Eventually, Thomas hid away in a house in Mt. Washington, invited a few close colleagues—Ty Segall plays drums on a pair of cuts, Corey Rose plays on four—then bashed out MOO, intent on keeping the hooks sharp and the amps loud. The form is familiar, recalling not just his early records like King Tuff and Black Moon Spell, but all the glam and garage acts he draws inspiration from as he revitalizes himself with the fantastic sounds of yesterday.
Still, Thomas doesn’t fully shake off the years when he played music with light and shade. Where he once seemed intent on overwhelming with distortion, he adds space and dimension to every track on MOO, giving each one a distinct personality. The album opens with “Twisted on a Train,” which kicks like a mule until being usurped by the AOR windmills of “Stairway to Nowhere.” The buoyant “Invisible Ink” splits the difference between country-rock and power-pop, “Oil Change” jangles like a forgotten ’60s folk-rocker, and “Unglued” taps into the chiming riffs and harmonies that powered Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in their prime.
This expanded palette never feels showy. Instead, it sounds like the natural evolution of an artist who wandered into experimentation but has found his way back to his gut impulses. He spends the album letting his instincts battle his imagination, resulting in a record that feels as primal and undeniable as his earliest work, but also limber and lithe, even funny: He takes the time to grumble about being menaced by “Crosseyed Critters” on a country-rock ramble whose gripes serve as a counterpoint to the barreling “Oil Change.” The shifts in sound and sensibility don’t sound manic; they’re the work of an artist who inadvertently found his strengths while attempting to leave himself behind.
