By Jacob Davis
Tropical F8$k Storm's New Singles are Delightful Blasts From the Past
Your mind is muddled. You’re not quite sure how it happened - but the eggs in your skull are scrambled. Could’ve been the bad acid you got from the shady guy living in that shack in the middle of nowhere. Maybe it was the baseball bat delivered to the back of your skull, courtesy of the aforementioned shady guy, just when you turned your back to ingest the speed you just bought. Wait, wasn’t it acid? All you know is that you’re fried, and you’re not coming down. What’s that wet feeling on your shoulder? Oh. Chunks of gray matter leaking out of your ear. No biggie.
Aussie punk rockers Tropical F*ck Storm just released a fresh, semi-new pair of singles in preparation for their upcoming album. This comes a few months after the release of the dizzying and sublime “Suburbiopia” released with “This Perfect Day,” an absolutely bonzer collaboration with fellow manics Amyl and the Sniffers.
The split single consists of two songs, both of them covers, “Legal Ghost” and “Heaven.” Tropical F&ck Storm’s take on “Heaven” might seem odd at first, as the psychedelic stew that Tropical F$ck Storm’s known to cook up with their songs wouldn’t logically mesh with David Byrne’s ballad about the eternal waiting room, at least on paper. But in practice, it quickly becomes apparent that Tropical F?ck Storm’s brand of weirdness and that of the Talking Heads is a match made in…
And if by the end of listening to this split single, you reach Heaven, “Legal Ghost” is the death you experience before you make it there. There’s an old debate in critical circles, “Do the times shape the artist, or does the artist shape the times?”. Maybe a valid, if simplistic discussion in most cases, but it’s tough to imagine a song this bleak coming out at any time before the year 2020. But wait! This song was originally written by Gareth Liddiard when he was with his old band The Drones back in 1998? To be fair, the feelings of futility and hopelessness that permeate the track aren’t exclusive to the present, but one would have to be a fool to think that revisiting this oldie is simply an exercise in nostalgic narcissism. It’s clear that this song is timeless. That said, “Legal Ghost” greatly benefits from the update. The original serves as a sincerely cool song, featuring barebones percussion, and this wayward synthesized instrumental that I’m honestly a sucker for. But 2020’s “Legal Ghost” sees the song not only change but grow from this despondent ditty to something bigger. It’s still just as intimate, but the totality of it all is so much more apparent. The dirt’s already on your grave. “It doesn’t really matter who you sleep with now, you always sleep alone.”
Tropical F^ck Storm makes music that will disintegrate you. The guitars are tuned in such a way that they sound like they’re upside down. The vocals are snarly and scuzzy, seeing vocalist Gareth Liddiard sounding like a disinterested bum one moment and a madman preacher prophesying the colonization of cartoon planets the next. This is all interspersed with some really punchy call and response with bandmate Fiona Kitschin. And this tension doesn’t just extend to the lyrical delivery, but the instrumentation. It feels like there’s this constant line being walked between absolute mania and the hangover the morning after, with these switch-ups leaving you feeling like you’re caught in a time loop.
There’s something endlessly engaging about the musical artist who can make the prettiest, cleanest sounding music- and say, “Nah, we’re good mate.” The madness and appeal of Tropical F@ck Storm comes from their soupy sonic signature. Around the release of Braindrops, Liddiard and Kitschin stated in interviews that they really wanted to “make it wonky” with that project, often attaching mics to the wrong places on their instruments, using speakers for amps, overdriving vibrato pedals, and simply just throwing random junk around during recordings.
Now, quirky recording techniques don’t really hold much appeal if the music is garbage; luckily, that’s not the case here. The musicianship is seriously on point, but it’s more than that. It’s this intangible energy brought to the record by playing so fast and loose. The songs here pulsate and twitch. It feels like you could dance to it and seize to it at the same time. Yet, to say the music Tropical F#ck Storm creates feels alive would be a bit of a misrepresentation. A more accurate painting would be that of a dying piece of roadkill in the summer heat. Dead and alive; grotesque at first glance, but strangely captivating, difficult to tear your gaze away from- possibly tasty. Actually, it looks pretty appetizing. What’s the statute of limitations on roadkill? It doesn’t seem too ripe- fresh if anything. A bite couldn’t hurt, right?
So you sit in your chair, thinking to yourself, “hmmm, today I will listen to Tropical Frick Storm!” and, absolutely clueless, you play it. Something in your gut turns over, and your eyes roll into the back of your head. You wake up in the middle of the bush, naked, the sun beating down on your back. After a quick vomit sesh, you hop into the driver’s seat of a beat Pontiac Fiero and floor it- you don’t really know where to.
