by Conor Lochrie (@conornoconnor)
Which Way Am I? The album title of Toronto’s Tough Age’s fourth LP - released via Mint Records - may be the most encapsulating album name for its creators right now. Tough Age call their music “culmination rock” and what a description this is. The work of Jarrett Samson (vocalist, songwriting), Jesse Locke (drums), and Penny Clark (guitar, vocals) is really the combining of years of sonic ideas, lost bands, and defining experiences. Since 2012, each album has refined their tight and energetic sound further; so Which Way Am I? is their strongest release.
It’s an exhilarating and addictive record, an expansive and impressive mixture of sights and sounds. It would be reductive to merely label them a post-punk band, a facetious categorization, for the songs on this record are so influenced by a melange of historical indie and punk styles. Most notably, Which Way Am I? highlights the band’s adoration and respect for Australia’s punk and New Zealand’s Flying Nun. As previously reviewed on Post-Trash, “Penny Current Suppression Ring” is a homage to Melbourne garage rockers Eddy Current Suppression Ring, while Clark’s vocal mocks Samson’s obsession with Flying Nun Records (“I wanna get signed to Flying Nun / Consider me”).
The band are a wild bunch of contradictions, clearly. There is an unrelenting intensity to what Tough Age does but every snarling moment is countered with a lighter melody, every frenetic burst of guitar noise balanced with a memorable hook. The emotional deliberations - and there are a few, although they are witty in mode - are always balanced out by the rush and thrill of the instrumentation. Which Way Am I? truly vibrates with a sense of harmony: here are a three-piece who are still working on their sound but are so intricately understanding of one another’s playing.
The album is roughly split into two: side one offers shorter run-times and nervous racket; side two lounges in a more meditative state, with longer bursts of ruminative guitar workouts. It’s a frighteningly self-aware record, even from its opening lines. “Here we are, back on track / Anyone still looking?”, Samson inquires rhetorically on “Self-Confidence,” a sardonic surmising of the precariousness of modern independent music in the age of streaming. The first half wallows in this kind of defeatist acknowledgement of limitations. On “Desire?” Samson sings “See the patterns in your life try to make them change / See the patterns in your self / Repeat them just the same”; the fifth track is even called “My Life’s a Joke & I’m Throwing It Away,” a blazing acceptance of mediocrity (“You feel like you would like it? You should give it a try”).
The lighter and aptly-titled “Repose” signals a slight slowing down of the tempo. Clark leads the vocals again, sounding wise and thoughtful (“Lying on grass / Hands reaching out for the stars”). “Mathers Ave” is then a lovely instrumental piece, all considered chords and swirling noise. The band are joined by Claire Paquet on “Possession” with the surprise introduction of a flute, of all the instruments, a utensil of the twee-pop sensibility; it’s here that Tough Age sounds scarily like The Bats. “Patience of Mind” has the longest guitar sequence, a jangling languorous piece.
Warm and cold, jangle and thrash, the sound of the dreamer and the sound of the realist. Which Way Am I? One feels like Tough Age is only just beginning to consider this question. They’re far from done.