Take Muscle Tough's "Fred the Fred" For a Walk This Week

By Emily Herbein

Muscle Tough thrives in a space of boundless funk fusion and introspective, intentional collaboration. This most recent single, which I hope you picked up on Bandcamp Friday, pays tribute to the emotional complexities of our relationships with our pets. That pitch in the email hooked me because, if you know me, then you know how obsessed I am with my cats. Like most people, the fondness my animals and I mutually have for each other only grew after this last year indoors, and I don’t think I would have survived quarantine without them. I really appreciated seeing this lens on pandemic relationships in a submission because I feel like, as constant as our pets’ presences are, we sometimes forget just how much we lean on them for support. “Fred the Fred,” though it’s instrumental, hit home for me in the way that it’s deeply emotive because our pets don’t need words, either.

Self-described as something akin to a Devo or Pat Metheny track, “Fred the Fred” starts with a provocative bassline and procession of shimmering guitar chords. Overlaid with a sample of the Fred in question, the song then kicks into an uptempo progression of synthetic riffs and the change of pace feels organic to the slow-building introduction. If this is trying to illustrate the unpredictability of what it’s like to own a dog, writer and drummer Joe Baldacci nailed it. The track comes to an abrupt halt in the middle and then breaks down into a moment of guitar-focused lazy riffing before picking up speed again. Trying to properly illustrate how an instrumental track makes me feel is always a challenge but I feel like the overt theme here is that the patternless blueprint of this song is meant to echo life with any sort of pet. Punches will be thrown from every corner, and it’s just about changing pace to match the moment when it feels right.

I wish I’d met this dog.

You can stream “Fred the Fred” on Bandcamp below.