Tuff Love up the fuzzy fun factor on new ‘Dregs’ EP

This song is based around a guitar melody that had been going round in the Tuff Love brain for a couple of years. I was in France when I came up with the bit. I recorded it on an unplugged electric guitar using my phone and could barely hear it listening back because someone was doing the dishes. But I managed to remember the idea anyway, which is lucky. It needed to have a home, so one day we wrote this. There are too many words to fit comfortably, and that always seems to happen with our songs, but never mind. When I think of the words my mind floods with images, mostly bits of memories from growing up. I used to sit on top of the shed in our garden at night with my best friend and look at the stars and we would talk about wanting to be private detectives and architects and astronomers and I think about that. There is a tree in a park nearby to where I grew up that people would carve their names into when they were in love with each other. I think there’s a tree like that near to where everybody grew up.

We were sitting in Suse’s flat and she started playing these chords, the verse, and it was so catchy, and I said “carry on!” and so we finished it there and then. An image comes into my mind of wading through a river and it’s an image I have from when I read the book As I Lay Dying years and years ago, but I’m not sure of its relevance to the book or the song because I can’t remember anymore. All I remember of the book now is that image and the chapter that goes ‘My mother is a fish.’ Maybe my subconscious is telling me I should read the book again.

We wrote this song a couple of years ago. We always wanted to use it for something and it felt like it fit with this EP. It’s about ageing and becoming dispensable. I have anxiety that when I get old nobody will want to hug me. Or that I’ll get old but not wise. What then? Or that people will just say that I’m cute which is what people often say about other people when they look vulnerable and like they might be easily crushed. I’m not sure what age you have to be to be considered old.

This is about personal growth, evolution and animals. My friend Kenneth came in to work one day talking about the axolotl, which fuelled a hefty research session into the axolotl. A while later, armed with a tenuous grasp of amphibious creatures, combined with some non-amphibious creatures, basically anything a bit green looking, I wrote the words for this. It’s really about a lizard I think. It’s about the transformations we’re constantly going through. There’s a last verse that ties it together, but it was all a bit long and self indulgent, so we cut it. Which is probably what we should do to this paragraph.

This song was originally called ‘Fuck Trolley’. I think it fit much better, and have not yet managed to adjust to the new name. Maybe “Fuck Trolley’ sounds abrasive or bad or hard, but to me it sounds gentle and silvery. I think the song is about different kinds of family and the things that can tie us together. I remember writing the first line and thinking “that’s awful.” It’s in 3/4 then there’s a bit that goes into 4/4 and Suse put some amazing harmonies there that I want to hear over and over again, but the part is so short.

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