Genre-bending Tropical Fuck Storm present their highly anticipated fourth album. The band’s DIY approach, creating sonic tapestries that depict the dystopian world through which we sleepwalk, while still, occasionally, offering us a glimmer of hope that we can come out the other side, has resulted in a shift in focus that proves just what we already knew. There is no background music here, no distraction, no second screen scrolling. “Fairyland Codex” is a journey, an album that demands attention from start to finish.
The songs on ‘Fairyland Codex’ immerse us in the chaos of a fateful landslide, picking out the characters that litter the impending collapse of society. Acidic, acerbic, anarchic; Tropical Fuck Storm’s command of wordplay, undercut by snarling guitars, pulsing rhythms, and explosive salvos, populates a hinterland between light and dark. The vocal interplay between Liddiard and the soaring harmonies of Kitschin and Dunn creates a teetering balancing act that’s intensified by the frantic narratives that evolve from their collective psyche.
Freshly signed to Fire Records, Tropical Fuck Storm is the Australian rock band and supergroup formed by Gareth Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin of The Drones. Their sound is characterised by elements of art punk, noise rock and experimental rock.
“Tropical Fuck Storm are masters of tension and release.” The Guardian.
“Tropical Fuck Storm Stir Up A Psychedelic, Dadaist Spectacle” Bandcamp.
“A messy, hyperverbal, supremely danceable monolith.” Aquarium Drunkard.
“In Tropical Fuck Storm’s determination to engage as fully as possible with the reality of human existence, in all its ugliness and contradictions, they are tapping into its truths.” The Quietus
“It’s the Golden Age of Arseholes.” Has any band captured the insanity of the last decade in such vivid, poetic, hallucinatory detail better than Australia’s Tropical Fuck Storm? Formed in 2017 by Gareth Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin of The Drones, with Lauren Hammel (High Tension) and Erica Dunn (Mod Con), the band have been reporting from the edge of the apocalypse — a surreal “future now” that’s only slightly removed from our actual reality. That lyric is from “Goon Show,” one of many awesomely phantasmagoric songs on TFS’ fourth album. “I’ve seen the cellphone footage and it’s raining cats and dogma,” Liddiard continues. “You can rob a bank, but you don’t really rob the bank.”
Tropical Fuck Storm avoid specifics — names are rarely mentioned — but they always nail the mood. Living in the Australian bush outside Melbourne, where the barren terrain is home to all manner of weird and deadly wildlife, perhaps gives the band their uniquely Darwinian perspective: viewing the current climate as just the latest natural disaster the Earth must weather before eventually hitting the reset button. “Don’t you worry about money, don’t you worry about being alone,” Liddiard sings — backed by Kitschin and Dunn’s harmonies — on the contemplative, brooding ballad “Stepping on a Rake.” “Don’t worry about what’s coming, some things are not worth knowing.”
The interplay between Liddiard’s gruff, distinctly Aussie howl and Kitschin and Dunn’s sweet harmonies — often in call-and-response form — is also at the core of what makes Tropical Fuck Storm so unique. Liddiard calls it like he sees it: a world on the brink, its inhabitants doing what they must to survive. Kitschin and Dunn offer some flicker of faith in humanity. Dunn and Liddiard also have a near-telekinetic guitar interplay, with performances that are wildly unhinged and skronky but somehow land back in the pocket, never going overboard. “Fairyland Codex” mixes Grand Guignol psych-rock and funk (“Irukandji Syndrome,” “Goon Show,” “Bloodsport”) with surprisingly tender moments, like the title track — a perfect example of TFS’ balance of dystopia and hope: “A village in hell is waiting for you… if you choose.”
The Fat Angel Sings 