Tough Cuffs’ latest EP is the searing All Dogs Go To Heaven.
“One Track Mind” opens with two wordless barks and a riff that features about as many banshee-like feedback screeches as it does sledgehammer power chords. It’s the same energy that an attack dog exudes as it snaps at the end of its rusting chain. The track plays out as an excoriation at the hands of some domineering tyrant (“You’re listening to me / While you’re living in my house / What you think is what I know / You’re fucking stupid”), maybe a father or stepfather whose favorite activities include angrily swilling beers in an easy chair and throwing empty cans at the television, maybe a self-hating corner of the narrator’s own mind. At various points the guitars drop out entirely to form an octagon in which relentless drum hits and smacks of bass overwhelm vocals sung in a slurred and slack-jawed lower register. The finale is the most punishing part of all; the guitars come in jagged as broken glass, and the shouts (“I don’t know nothing / But I know I can make you a man) grow even more rawly unglued. It’s not a song; it’s a fight.
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