Deep fakes false flags fires and famine F---Storms pandemic howl

By Martin BoultonUpdated August 15, 2021 â€" 3.35pmfirst published at 1.14pm

Zooming in below a bright blue sky at home in Nagambie, 120km north of Melbourne, Gareth Liddiard is happy to just soak in some early morning sun.

Tropical F--- Storm (from left, Erica Dunn, Gareth Liddiard, Fiona Kitschin and Lauren Hammel).Credit:

The night before, regional Victoria was eased out of the lockdown restrictions that still apply across Melbourne â€" but it was cold comfort for Liddiard. Touring plans for his band Tropical F--- Storm are stuck in limbo while state borders remain shut and musicians far and wide grapple with ongoing uncertainty due to COVID-19.

“We spend our whole time rescheduling everything, that’s all we do now, reschedule, reschedule, reschedule,” he said. “We can’t rehearse, we can’t all get together as a band and do anything ... it’s very frustrating.”

Tropical F--- Storm’s third album Deep States is out Friday, August 20, and the band has shows booked in Melbourne and interstate over the next month. Like almost all touring musicians in Australia, Liddiard has no idea if upcoming shows will go ahead, and he’s very aware of the wider ramifications for the industry.

“Our booking agents, they only get paid if we play, but for every show they’ve done 10 times the work they’ve ever done in the past ... let alone bar staff, venue staff, and then it’s next level when you get to festival organising. For us, even if we can do the [Melbourne] show, we might not be able to rehearse ... and we’re supposed to be playing new songs.”

Those new songs on Deep States capture the growing sense of fatigue, frustration and uncertainty felt by so many people, now 18 months since being plunged into a pandemic. Lead single G.A.F.F leaves no uncertainty as Liddiard howls about “deep fakes, false flags, fires and famine” before declaring over spaced-out strings and electronic drums “I’ve got a nasty case of Give A F--- Fatigue.” Statistics, strange diseases and too much information add to the fatigue Liddiard and his bandmates feel, painting an all too familiar picture in G.A.F.F of the times we’re all sharing.

New single Bumma Sanga, released last week, hones in even more acutely on COVID-19, being locked down and endlessly watching television to escape the nagging sense of monotony. The already trippy, sci-fi mood gets turbocharged here with Liddiard singing “This was supposed to be a summer banger, but it’s just another bumma sanger, How you going with the cabin fever? Are you feeling like some pain relief?”

If it’s relief through music you want, Deep States could be just the tonic you’re craving. Having settled on a band name in 2017 that became an eerie portent of things to come, this third album uses reality in 2021 as a starting point for its weirdness. In the strange galaxy of Tropical F---- Storm, multimillionaires blasting their way into space on private rocket ships verges on humdrum in the endless stream of headlines and information.

“We just couldn’t conceive of making an album without mentioning COVID or the other crazy s--- that’s going on,” Liddiard said. “I mean, COVID, everyone’s going through it and probably don’t want to hear about it when they chuck a record on, but we thought it would be insane not to acknowledge it in some way.”

It’s not just the pandemic Liddiard turns his attention to lyrically on Deep States. There’s a wildly kooky, mildly infectious cinematic quality to the music too, which veers further still from the guitar focus of his previous band, the Drones, which also featured Fiona Kitschin on bass.

We’ve always sounded neurotic and anxious but now everyone else feels the same way we always have ...

Gareth Liddiard

Erica Dunn (guitar, keyboard) and Lauren Hammel (drums) complete TFS and Liddiard says it was being tucked away in Nagambie with synthesizers, drum machines and nowhere else to go that played a major part in the band’s overtly sci-fi sound.

“Lauren was on her phone for G.A.F.F making those drum machines sounds, so G.A.F.F is mainly her doing that,” Liddiard says, gazing skywards from his sunbathed backyard. “It was great to watch, very funny, so yeah, it was her phoning it in, literally.

“We do like melodies too, but whether it’s all the s--- going on in the world, or modern equipment and different ways of playing, there’s plenty to do and plenty of new territory to scope out. The world is kind of a disaster, but it’s a very interesting disaster with misinformation, QAnon and crazy conspiracy theories going on ... endless s--- for songs.”

Liddiard’s songwriting prowess has been on show since the Drones’ 2005 album won the inaugural Australian Music Prize. More recently, his wordplay and hip hop-style delivery has added another string to his bow, but that too has always been there in the background, he says.

“I remember hearing Colours by Ice-T ... and the lyrics were incredible,” he says. “When I was in high school, Public Enemy was huge and N.W.A and that [music] was always there the same way jazz has been there for me, or blues or rock ’n’ roll. We just didn’t have the equipment to do it, but now when we turn on a drum machine it makes you do something hip hop-esque, the same way turning on an electric guitar makes you do something like AC/DC, it just happens.”

Since 2017, the guitars have taken somewhat of a back seat in Tropical F--- Storm’s more experimental, psychedelic direction and on Deep States the group delivers its most collaborative collection of songs. While his own naturally ferocious guitar playing makes room for other elements to shine, Liddiard has found a musical vehicle in TFS that still explodes on stage.

TFS’s third album Deep States is out Friday, August 20.

After the group’s 2018 A Laughing Death in Meatspace album and 2019’s Braindrops, Liddiard did what he’s been doing since the early days of the Drones â€" touring here and overseas. Sadly, he’s already seen shows for his new band Springtime [with the Dirty Three’s Jim White and the Necks’ Chris Abrahams] cancelled this year and there’s no certainty about the remainder of 2021.

Meanwhile, he’ll enjoy his relative freedoms and spend time digging through “mountains of hard drives” at home in Nagambie, the result of Deep States recording sessions that yielded all sorts of weird and wonderful Tropical F--- Storm leftovers. There might even be another album in there.

“It seems like the world is more accepting of our crazy sound,” the 45-year-old said. “We’ve always sounded neurotic and anxious but now everyone else feels the same way we always have, so it’s good for us in a way.”

Deep States is available through TFS Records.

Martin Boulton is EG Editor at The Age and Shortlist Editor at the Sydney Morning Herald

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