“Tough Luck” starts with a lo-fi, staticy radio sound that evokes an old-timey carnival, but within 40 seconds emerges into a slightly distorted beat and vocal, with minimal accompanying accoutrements, that flowingly and somewhat impatiently eases into the lines, ‘Tough luck don’t be lazy / You know where I like to hide’, which, quite frankly, isn’t the type of luck I’d be inviting to find me, I’ll have you know. But if you don’t give this single from Portland, OR quintet, How Strange It Is, a chance, then I will deviously wish some tough luck to come your way.
The imagery in “Tough Luck” is rough, but somehow familiar. Picturing the lyrics come to life in your mind’s eye is quite pleasurable, whether it’s ‘There’s a Honda in the ditch / With no one inside’ or the more localized ‘Singing Dekum Mazzie Star’. Btw, Dekum is a theater and performance space in the City of Roses, and it’s unclear if it’s a reference to the real Mazzy Star with a misspelling or something otherwise completely mysterious and only known to How Strange It Is.
The raging chainsaw-crossed-with-dentist-drill guitar at around 2m08s is triumphant. Just keep rewinding that 20 seconds and listening again and again – you should too! (I’d love to know the pedal combo on that sound!)
And that’s exactly what’s so compelling about this. Immersed in the lush soundscape and instrumental architecture, fragilely holding up lines like ‘In an ether of imaginary characters / and quotes I forget’, I have gone on a 4-minute journey with Jordan, Caleb, Annie, Annie, and Kyle, and I couldn’t be more pleased!
“Tough Luck” is featured on their new full-length album THERE IS NO EVIL, which is released on October 20th.
Written by Greg Gobel
