Mansions - Tuff Luff (October 6th, 2023) • Page 2

I loved the EP Initiative through Doom Loop, haven't really been able to get into anything they've done since. Thinking about preordering this and holding off on listening to the single.

 

Listening to the Deserter EP for the first time in a few years. It’s held up pretty well (first three tracks specifically) so maybe I should revisit Big Bad. That’s the one record I really couldn’t get into aside from a few tracks.

 

Big Bad is such a mood record.

 

Seconded. Don’t want to share any detailed impressions this early on, but it’s great!

 

the best band

 

Great version of a great song.

 

DOTD was kind of a holy grail for my vinyl wall, so I jumped on the repress as soon as I saw it! Kinda sticks out against visually against the others, but I’m real happy with it!

 

New Mansions song up and it’s great!

 

A lot of short songs on here. 11 tracks, 31 minutes. Going to be tight.

 

It definitely leaves you wanting more, in a good way. The back half of this record really resonates with me.

 

Album bio from Evan Lucy:

There’s a moment on “Underrated,” the angular, fuzzed-out cleanup hitter on MANSIONS’ sixth full-length,TUFF LUFF (Bad Timing Records), where singer/guitarist Chris Browder declares, “Let’s be underrated/So what if no one loves or hates it?/You thought it up and made it.”

A refrain like this is equal parts victory lap for the band – they of cult status in the indie-rock underground over the last 15 years thanks to heralded albums like Dig Up The Dead (2011) and Doom Loop (2013) – as much as it is an existential rumination on what it means to be creative, to sink so much of yourself into your art on the chance it could connect with audiences somewhere out there.

On Tuff Luff, the Seattle trio (Browder, bassist/vocalist Robin Dove and drummer Christopher Thomas) explore life’s twists and turns through big questions like these, though they’re infinitely less concerned with the answers than they might have been in the past. Rather, it’s the act of even asking them that represents real progress.

“These songs are personal in a different sort of way than before,” Browder explains. “I had just started therapy, and it was helping me see things in a much clearer way. In the past if I was having an issue, it usually manifested lyrically as a conflict with someone else but missed the core anxiety or fear I actually had. These songs – in a way that almost embarrasses me – are straight to the point in terms of what the real thing is.”

In contrast to its predecessor, the more brooding and restrained Big Bad (2020),Tuff Luff is brash and boisterous, channeling the crunching energy of Doom Loop and 2007’s New Best Friends with power-pop charisma and indie-rock angst. In many ways, it’s the great exhale to Big Bad’s more meditative moments and the sound of Browder tapping back into his youth, eschewing inhibition and second-guessing for the purest impulse.

“As you get older, there's always a desire to get back to what made you fall in love with music in the first place,” he explains. “I did a cover of an Angel Olsen song in a garage-rock style that was fun and stupid but had a cool contrast between the music and the lyrics. Doing that opened up the record for me: the instinct of turning on distortion pedals and almost doing it like I would have in high school. There’s a purity there instead of trying to be too clever.”

Like the self-actualization that arose from therapy, that sense of purity manifests itself in the type of questions Browder asks throughout the album’s 11 songs: whether he’s asking them of himself (“Is everybody hanging out without me all my life?” from the self-effacing “2 B w/ People”) or others (“Are we close or just adjacent?” on the social anxiety-inspired “Something Sweet”). He admits they’re topics he might not have been confident enough to broach in the past, now recognizing the power of turning perceived weaknesses into strengths, steeling yourself for the future by weaponizing your raw emotions.

“The introspection and tough love of taking the time to deal with your own stuff is hard,” he says, referencing the album’s title. “It’s so much easier to just ignore it.”

But it’s clear from the last decade and a half that people do love the art Browder, Dove and Thomas make, connecting to it on an intimately personal level. Look no further than the 11-year celebration of Dig Up The Dead, which Mansions commemorated with a one-time event in Brooklyn that Browder described as “uniquely special and validating” – and a night that actually influenced what Tuff Luff would become.

“I had to relearn Dig Up The Dead songs in a way that let me feel like an outside listener,” he says. “It had been so long since I played them that I started to realize there are certain guitar tunings or things that my hands do that feel natural to me, but wouldn’t be obvious to other songwriters. In the past I had fought those tendencies, but I learned it’s just my particular style and started seeing that as a positive. On this album I leaned into that to make something that sounds like me, instead of overthinking it and trying to be somebody else.”

So while Mansions aren’t afraid to look back every now and then, theTuff Luff era ultimately sees them entering a bold, new future as a band – importantly, fully on their own terms, rising to meet life’s ebbs and flows in a way that’s authentically them.

“We’re probably never going to be a full-time touring band again,” Browder admits. “While we were transitioning to that, COVID happened – in a way, the world changed to meet what we wanted to do anyways. We’re now in this phase where we’re putting out records and playing a show or two a year that feel like special events. It feels meaningful and cool, and wildly sustainable.”

 

It’s very good!

 

It’s out!

 

Wow, hell yeah. This is the most immediately I’ve enjoyed something of his since Doom Loop.

 

This is sick. Just one after the other. No time to breathe.

 

This is good.

 

Love this way this almost plays like one continuous, ever-shifting song

 

Loving this!

 

This album is great, I didn't love Big Bad but this is exactly what I wanted from Mansions. It's like the cool 90's fuzz rock vibe of doom loop with the energy of dig up the dead.

 

This is the Mansions I love to hear!

Deserter was pretty good and Big Bad was meh for me outside a few tracks so I’m stoked to be actually stoked on a new Mansions record in 2023!

 

the memes they've been posting on IG all day are as good as this album

 

You ain’t lying lol

 

I’m enjoying this

 

im on two ways about this one. great concepts all around but some of the melodies and lyrics kinda lose me. gonna chalk it up to the 1st listen experience and revisit it a ton. ive loved every mansions record immediately on first listen so its so strange for this to hopefully be a grower!

deserter and the darker sounds of doom loop are my jams with this act, for reference!