King Tuff heralded his return earlier this year with “The Other,” the title track from his first album since 2014. Now he’s back with another new song, a psych rocker called “Raindrop Blue,” and an accompanying video, which features him spending some quality time with his favorite car.
King Tuff also shared a lengthy statement about the song, in which he outlines a mystical connection between it, the album, and the blue Subaru featured in the video. Apparently, he wrote the song about a blue 1982 Subaru Brat, his dream car, and after showing it to a friend, that friend came across the car on Craigslist. Of course, King Tuff went out and bought it, all thanks to whatever cosmic forces worked together to make this happen.
Watch the video above, read King Tuff’s full statement below, and learn more about The Other here.
“…I took the hand of the Other…you fell onto my fingers like velvet to the touch…
Is Raindrop Blue the lost forgotten lover? Is she the Other? Is she the Blue Subaru?
Funny story about that Blue Subaru…I wrote ‘The Other’ in October 2016. At the time it was a fictional story about losing myself and the quest to find the creative spirit again. I imagined myself driving around in a 1982 blue Subaru Brat, which has been my dream car ever since I was a little kid. I would see them driving around my hometown, Brattleboro, Vermont, and I thought the name Brat had something to do with the town itself. It always seemed like the unicorn of cars; you’d only catch a glimpse of one when you weren’t looking. So I was driving this car around in my song cuz you can do whatever you want inside a song.
A year and a half later and the album was done. I sent it to my good friend Em so she could take a listen. She’s been in school studying dreams and alchemy, and we talked about the dark side of the moon, the flip side of the mirror, the unknowable Other and things in the lyrics which were oddly in line with her studies. She’s always had the most poetically surreal dreams as long as I’ve known her, full of symbols and strange beauty, like she’s tapped into some kinda psychic conduit. She was in Vermont but her dreams had been telling her to go to New Mexico. She needed transportation for when she got there, so she was hunting around on Craigslist to find some dusty old high-desert gem she could zoom around in. The first car that popped up: ‘1982 Blue Subaru Brat in Albuquerque.’ The exact car from my song. She sent me the ad. I immediately booked a flight out there, bought the car, and drove her back to LA in a blaze of romantic glory.
The lyrics in the song had somehow come true.It felt like whatever this mysterious ‘Other’ was, it seemed like maybe it was on my side. Helping me along. As long as I had faith in it.
So..is Raindrop Blue the Other? or the Subaru? Probably both and probably neither. But one thing is for certain: I love to dance.”
