- A Laughing Death in Meatspace is a debut album like no other. Firstly, these are no novice musicians. Featuring members of acclaimed cult-band The Drones as well as Palm Springs and Harmony, Tropical Fuck Storm are much more experienced than the average band releasing their first album. Secondly, this album is weird. It is difficult to make comparisons because it doesn’t resemble much, especially within the current Australian music landscape. Musically, it is visceral and often times atonal. Lyrically it is esoteric, detailed and biting. Although it is hard to pigeonhole, one thing is for certain — this album is great.
To most, A Laughing Death in Meatspace will simply seem like another album by The Drones and it is hard to distinguish the difference between Tropical Fuck Storm and The Drones. Like any other Drones album, A Laughing Death in Meatspace was written by singer-songwriter and guitarist Gareth Liddiard, whose style is gregariously unique. With his trademark Aussie-drawl, whammy-bar guitaring and erudite lyrics (interspersed with copious Aussie-slang), Liddiard hasn’t deviated far from his usual habits. Lyrically, the album traverses across terrain far and wide. On opener, You Let My Tires Down, the landscape is a sea of Vodka Cruisers in Victoria and on The Future of History, Liddiard escorts the listener to a chess match between Russian chess-savant Garry Kasparov and IBM’s supercomputer, Deep Blue.
Musically it's all highly experimental. From the offbeat drumming on Antimatter Animals to the five-and-a-half-minute instrumental, Shellfish Toxin, TFS are anything but conventional. However, this isn’t entirely unexpected. The Drones’ last album Feelin Kinda Free, was a step in the direction that A Laughing Death in Meatspace heads. As is often the case on Liddiard’s albums, the first track and the last track are standouts. On brilliant closer, Rubber Bullies, the narrator begins a monologue about choosing what to buy in a supermarket aisle only to conclude that, “This world’s way too connected and all anybody does is fight”. Liddiard’s writing is razor-sharp here as he beguilingly composes sentences that are both humourous and caustic. Liddiard’s lyrical talents are seemingly boundless (he even manages to write a multiple-choice rubric as a chorus), and his social commentary and description skills would rival most novelists. A passage towards the end of Rubber Bullies, “the guard up in the watchtower charged with keeping out the fighting / joked the difference between sexes all boils down to their handwriting / when we checked out the next morning we were on a first name basis / but then he had the kind of features where you can’t recall his face / but it wouldn’t have been that much later he saw God’s / ‘cause he died staring up the nostrils of a UPP shotgun” is particularly poignant as it concludes a sterling debut album. Although this band may be new, there are few producing work of this quality in Australia today.
- Jonathan Cloumassis.