Scottish indie pop has a rich history going way back to Orange Juice, Aztec Camera, Altered Images, The Bluebells and Lloyd Cole & The Commotions back in the heady days of the 80s. Say hello to Glasgow’s Tuff Love, who carry on this tradition with sunny, tuneful guitar pop that recalls a special time.
Consisting of Julie Eisenstein (guitar, vocals) and Suse Bear (bass, vocals) plus live drummer Iain Stewart (also a member of The Phantom Band), the band make all their music in Suse’s flat, self-engineering and self-producing everything. True indie. D.I.Y. to the max!
Good news for indie pop fans as the band has compiled the 3 EPs Junk, Dross and Dregs on the 15-track Resort. With song titles limited to one word mostly, you are guaranteed an economical use of melody, instrumentation and arrangements to maximise the immediacy of tracks like “Flamingo”, “Slammer”, “Sebastian” and erm, “Cum”.
So refreshing to see a young band returning to guitars and melodies in such a big way. One of those times when ‘less is more’ totally rings true.
