Tropical Fuck Storm : Fairyland Codex
“And then the moon turned red and waned away/Stars fell from the sky/Treetops crash and firestorms raged/Ash clouds burnt out our eyes.” Gareth Liddiard paints a pretty post-apocalyptic picture in the lumbering “Joe Meek Will Inherit the Earth” from Tropical Fuck Storm‘s fourth album, Fairyland Codex, but this is not a creative interpretation. Liddard, his 21st-century Australian acid punk disco scuzzhead band, and the world at large have observed this planet eat itself in recent memory. He could be recalling a segment on CNN, fake news or not.
Tropical Fuck Storm (sometimes they get the band name right folks) is the far-fetched Australian tetrad, born out of the ashes of The Drones, that doesn’t give a craptastic you-know-what about how many times they landed on the Spotify wrapped list. Something tells me they’d prefer to be off the Skynet-like platform altogether. No freakin’ way.
Gareth Liddiard, Lauren Hammel, Fiona Kitschin, and Erica Dunn are fantastical bohemian mavericks in song. They’ve ginned up the old we’re-fucked motif with a searing and, at times, tender album, Fairyland Codex, that calls the world out for exactly the ways it’s behaved in recent memory. We’re talking Frank Zappa, high on GWAR, vivid wordplay, and fanciful theater.
The Maurice Sendak house of horrors-inspired cover art alone is a bop in itself, not needing a single musical note for explanation. That being said, these are, by far, some of the most twisted-up good acid-punk, disco scuzzy anthems designed exactly for a world that can’t stop burning. On the scenic opener “Irukandji Syndrome,” Liddiard skitters about in his accent to a brutalist math-metal rock gantlet of an arrangement that Mad Max couldn’t survive. Liddiard gets the gold stars for the way he just throws away bars that need to be heard ad nauseam, such as on the carnival pump of “Goon Show”: “It’s the golden age of arseholes and the triumph of disgrace.” Just rock with that for a minute.
“Teeth Marche,” a sneaky bass-dominated laid-back wonky jam sees vocalist Erica Dunn drop some bars of her own. I think we are to believe the song is about something else, but I’m thinking 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in D.C.: “You got gold fillings flashing from the place where credit’s due/And those diamonds in your back pocket will all catch up with you.”
Fairyland Codex, recorded with co-producer Michael Beach at the band’s Dodgy Brothers studio in Nagambie, Australia, does the work an artist must do. Shine the red hot spotlight not just on the purveyors of our global demise, but all the little and large accompanying actions and incidentals along the way to show the insanity that comes along with the insanity. Such a record of the moment.
Label: Fire
Year: 2025
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Tropical Fuck Storm : Fairyland Codex
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