Scout Gillett spent three years trying to figure out a way to get into the studio with Stuart Sikes, admiring his work on, among other things, Cat Power’s The Greatest. As luck would have it, Sikes had relocated to Austin just as Gillett was finishing a European tour in 2024. What emerged from her sessions with the producer has all the earmarks of a confident, focused artist at least one album removed from what’s just her sophomore release.
Tough Touch (Slouch) finds its tender-and-tough spirit in all the right places—everyone from Chan Marshall and PJ Harvey to Joni Mitchell and Lucinda Williams. But the album carries its own emotional weight and sonic authenticity, seizing on every opportunity to expand Gillett’s cosmic-country imprint with a killer band she pieced together on the road. The journey began in her Brooklyn bedroom on a four-track TASCAM Portastudio. These days, Gillett is living in Los Angeles and already charting the course of her third album.
For the time being, this is what she had to say about Tough Touch.
—Hobart Rowland
1) “Too Fast To Last”
“This song was the last one written for the record right after my first headlining European tour. I wrote it after touring and traveling for what seemed like two years straight. It felt I was unable to sustain romantic relationships—and like I was always missing friends’ birthdays or shows. In the song, I’m also reflecting on the feeling of chasing the highs and new experiences but feeling lost and trying to identify what’s changed and what’s stayed the same. The band fleshed this out on our tour down to Austin to record Tough Touch in July 2024. I remember being in a haunted hotel room in New Orleans during a flash flood. We were all huddled on musky motel beds, going over the song unplugged. Truly one of the band’s closest moments.”
2) “Coney Island”
“I wrote this during a prolonged, difficult breakup. We went to Coney Island even though we both knew we couldn’t be together anymore. It was one of the most visceral experiences of my life. Somehow, I can play it all over like a movie in my head—the color of the sunset at the top of the Wonder Wheel. It was so beautifully real, raw and sad. We cried and buried notes for our love in the sand during Friday Night Fireworks and played ‘Coney Island Baby’ by Lou Reed on repeat. The song exposes the discovery of self through love and loss. Sonically, I had Neil Young & Crazy Horse in mind.”
3) “Gonna Change”
“Dang, I love this one. Once, before playing it live to an audience, I said, ‘This one’s about how shit’s always fucking changing.’ We attach to our ideas of ourselves and others, and sometimes that blindsides reality. Although this song tackles some challenges, it still maintains an upbeat attitude that you can two-step along to. Sonically, I had Bobby Charles’ self-titled record in mind. Jason Frey’s horns and Omar Schambacher’s guitar solo paint a beautiful picture. It’s one of my favorite moments on the record.”
4) “Blur”
“This was written during COVID. It’s about overcoming your shadows and fears when it feels like you’re stuck and acknowledging that it’s time to break out and let the world see your brightness. Don’t make yourself smaller for yourself or nobody else. This was one of the first written but the last to be recorded. It was recorded in L.A. with Jorge Bambi and Adam Gunther shortly after I moved there in December 2024. I was really going through it—not from a romantic relationship, which inspired the writing, but something else that was hard and paralyzing. I felt stuck and depressed. I put that into the song, and I feel so proud of the result. The vocals were supposed to be scratched. I tried to top them months later, but I couldn’t top the emotion.”
5) “Secret Life Of Trees”
“This one was written after a near-death experience in West Virginia. I was filming a DIY video for my cover of Broadcast’s ‘Come On Let’s Go’ and fell off a 10-foot cliff and punctured my lung on a broken tree. After a very difficult healing process and the worry that I may never be able to sing the same again, I wrote this song. I got tripped out thinking about how this broken tree caught me and saved my life … There were sharp, pointy broken rocks below the tree. The tree saved me but also punctured my lung and took my breath away. But trees give us the ability to breathe. Crazy.”
6) “If I Stay”
“Originally, this was a slow-tempo tape demo I had from 2022 about me wondering if things would change if I stayed in a relationship that felt challenging. When we were done tracking the songs that had already been fleshed out on the road, we pulled up the demos—and this one stuck out. Omar had the idea of speeding it up and rocking more. I invited Jim Campo of Magic Rockers Of Texas to the studio when I went back to Austin in October to finish vocals, and his solo is still blowing my mind. He came in with Taco Bell in hand and did that on the second take.”
7) “Cherry Blossoms”
“This song’s lyrics were written on my first solo trip to L.A. in 2022. I went to the ocean alone and was feeling alone but also incredibly understood by the water and flowers. It’s a lot about the beauty of nature and how one can feel less alone when they become one with the world around them and accept the things that scare us. It’s also about how everything dies and accepting that.”
8) “Control”
“Written about taking control of what you can and accepting what you can’t. This song has three different studio recordings, and all are very different from one another. It’s funny—the song just kept getting faster each time it was recorded, which is more like how it’s played live. What can I say? I like to rock.”
9) “Tough Touch”
“The title track, nearing the end of the record … Not so normal, but neither am I. This was the first song I started writing on the album. It’s my favorite to play live and the one audience members ask me about the most. I named the record after it because all the songs share a similar theme with broad dynamics—moving from delicate vulnerability to catharsis. ‘Tough Touch’ captures the difficulty of opening yourself up after experiencing rejection and pain—but getting through it and finding out that it’s possible to maintain vulnerability after pain.”
10) “Sweet Dreams”
“This song has had many lives and many arrangements, with multiple recorded versions. The full-band recordings never quite felt right to me. I had the idea to make it a ballad. I asked my cousin Jacob Kruse to fly to Austin and record on this. I grew up singing and writing songs with him while he played piano. We recorded at Church House Studios with my cousin across the room from me as I sang the vocals live with the piano. When I first listened to the masters from top to bottom and reached this track at the end, I teared up. Not because I was sad, but because of how full circle everything felt. I think it’s the most beautiful and vulnerable recording I’ve made to date. I saw myself as a little girl sitting next to my cousin at the piano and processed that this was the current result of that. Dreams can be very sweet—and they can come true.”
