Tough Cookie Are Done Listening to Everyone Else

Words by Kasia Krawczyk

With new single “Let Me Die (Curled In Your Arms)” out today, an upcoming EP on the horizon and a manifesto built around trusting themselves, Tough Cookie are entering a sharper, heavier new era.

Photos by Wiktoria Wolny

There’s something fittingly strange about the place where Tough Cookie make their music.

The band’s rehearsal space is a church. It’s not some carefully selected creative retreat or an elaborate studio chosen for its atmosphere — it was simply affordable, available and practical. But somewhere along the way, the building became more than just a room with instruments in it. It became the place where Tough Cookie write, rehearse and shape their sound.

It also happens to be haunted.

Or at least, the band are fairly convinced it is.

“We started jamming like a funk jam,” Jess recalls. “Something that is not usually what we play.” Apparently, whatever occupies the church wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about Tough Cookie temporarily abandoning their usual sound.

“Next to me there was a big rack and a massive drum case fell down. It knocked over a lamp and then knocked over the glass I was drinking out of, so I just had smashed glass at my feet.”

It’s the kind of story that sounds almost too perfectly rock ’n’ roll to be true. But the band insist there have been other incidents. Gavin, in particular, has his own unsettling experiences when he practises drums alone.

“He swears people have been touching his ankles,” the band explain. “He reckons he can feel people brushing his ankles.”

That raises an obvious question: does working in a supposedly haunted church actually make it harder to concentrate?

“Honestly, I forget about it until something happens,” they admit.

But perhaps the strange surroundings have seeped into the music regardless. Tough Cookie’s new material is darker, heavier and more focused than what came before it — and the band themselves acknowledge that their unusual rehearsal space might have played some subconscious role.

“I think it’s definitely had some sort of effect on the music,” they say. “I think the music is just darker, whether we’re noticing it or not.”

For a band whose new chapter is already producing some of their most focused material, the setting feels almost too appropriate.

A More Focused Tough Cookie

“Mercy!” feels like a turning point for Tough Cookie. The song is heavier and sharper, but the change isn’t simply about turning up the volume or making the guitars more aggressive. It comes from the way the band have approached songwriting itself.

Their previous record was created over a much longer period, bringing together songs written across several years. That gave the project a sense of history, but it also meant the band were sometimes trying to make different creative periods coexist.

“On the last record it was kind of like a mishmash of many, many years of songwriting,” they explain.

For the new material, the process has been considerably more condensed.

“This work that we’ve done is more concise. It was done in a much smaller amount of time, the songs feel like they’re more together.”

That cohesion seems to be one of the biggest differences between the two eras. Rather than taking songs from different moments and figuring out how they might fit together later, Tough Cookie have been able to build this new body of work with a much clearer idea of what they want it to sound like.

“On the last record we had to re-record bits to make them fit into one project and in some cases might have lost something there,” they say. “But on this one it’s way more concentrated, way more focused.”

There’s a confidence behind the way they talk about the new material, too. When asked whether they feel more confident in this process than they did previously, the answer is immediate.

“Yeah.”

It’s short, but it says plenty.

What “Mercy!” Means

At the heart of “Mercy!” is an experience that is deeply personal but, according to Tough Cookie, far from exclusive to one person.

The song explores what happens when something significant changes your life and you’re left trying to figure out how to exist on the other side of it. It’s about coming to terms with something that has happened — something big enough to knock everything off balance.

“I think the song covers a more broad audience,” they explain. “I don’t think it’s just relatable to me, I think it’s relatable to everyone in the band, especially.”

That universality is part of what gives the track its weight. The subject matter might come from a particular experience, but the feeling behind it is something the entire band can recognise.

“It’s about coming to terms with something that has happened in your life, something huge that has affected you,” they say. “Your life is spiralling out of control. I feel like a lot of people can understand that.”

Rather than trying to disguise that emotional core behind something overly polished, Tough Cookie seem more interested in letting it sit alongside the aggression of the music.

That combination — vulnerability wrapped in something loud and heavy — is becoming increasingly central to their identity.

The Tough Cookie Manifesto

If there is one phrase that sums up the band’s current mindset, it might be this:

Stop listening to everyone else.

The band have actually written it down as part of what they call the Tough Cookie Manifesto — a set of principles for how they want to approach making music.

It sounds simple. In reality, it’s something that can be surprisingly difficult for a band to achieve.

Music exists within an ecosystem of opinions. There are managers, labels, producers, promoters, social media, audiences and endless outside voices telling artists what might work. For Tough Cookie, that external noise had started to affect the creative process.

The solution was to deliberately step away from it.

“Just listen to everyone in the band and stop listening to everyone else’s opinions,” they explain.

Looking back, they feel that outside expectations had played too much of a role in previous projects.

“I think that’s where we went wrong previously and in other projects — worried about what other people think,” Jess says. “Worried about what management thought, labels and whatnot.”

Even social media became part of that pressure.

Now, the band are trying to separate the act of making music from the reaction they imagine it might receive.

It’s an important distinction. Instead of asking whether something is going to work for an audience, Tough Cookie are asking whether it feels right to them first.

And that decision seems to have had a direct impact on the music.

The new material feels less like a collection of outside expectations and more like a statement of who Tough Cookie actually are when nobody else is in the room.

From the Church to the Stage

If the recording process is about focus, the live show is where Tough Cookie allow themselves to lose control again.

The band have built a following through their live performances, and there’s a noticeable difference between hearing their music recorded and experiencing it in a room full of people.

“The energy, I think,” they say when asked what audiences can get from their live shows that they might not necessarily get from the recordings.

The sound itself becomes heavier. Guitar tones feel bigger, the performances become more physical and the songs can take on a life of their own.

“It’s a lot heavier,” they explain. “Roarer and heavier.”

But it isn’t simply a case of recreating the recording perfectly onstage.

Tough Cookie don’t necessarily play every song exactly the same way every night — and that’s something they’re willing to embrace.

“We don’t play it the same live every time,” they say. “We try to, but sometimes things go different and then we have to deal with the punches.”

That unpredictability is part of what makes a Tough Cookie show feel different from simply pressing play on a record.

“You never know what’s gonna happen,” they add. “So it’s a little bit more real, I guess.”

And that live unpredictability has already given fans a taste of what is coming next. “Let Me Die (Curled In Your Arms),” the band’s new single, is out today, following appearances in their recent live sets.

For a band whose new manifesto is built around trusting themselves, that approach makes sense. The live show doesn’t have to be flawless. It has to be alive.

What Comes Next

There’s plenty happening in the Tough Cookie world right now. With “Let Me Die (Curled In Your Arms)” out today, the band are continuing to build on the heavier, more focused sound they’ve been developing throughout this new chapter.

The single follows “Mercy!” and comes as the band look towards an upcoming EP and more live dates across the country.

“We’re going to be up and down the country in the next few months,” they say.

Their new era isn’t about trying to make everything fit neatly. It’s about stripping things back, trusting the people in the room and making music on their own terms.

Now, with “Let Me Die (Curled In Your Arms)” out today, the band has another piece of that story ready to share.

For Tough Cookie, the next step isn’t about listening harder to what everyone else wants.

It’s about turning up the amps, trusting the band, and seeing what happens when they stop listening altogether.

Photos by Wiktoria Wolny