I was prepared for Tropical Fuckstorm to be incendiary last night. What I was not prepared for was my response.
I was overwhelmed by emotion during the first song, feelings assailing me every left, which and wrong way, coming at me so fast I didn’t know which way I could turn, how to escape.
I wanted to run and leave. I wanted to stay and push my already injured palm through plate glass. I wanted to rage and rush and bury my head, and seek comfort or solace or… I couldn’t believe it. I had tears streaming down my face, my whole body was shaking. This, to me, was Brisbane.
This, to me, was the promise of everything we’d left behind when we left Australia, the brand new future we’d forged and hedged for ourselves. This is what I’d been hiding from for so many years, will continue hiding from away aside from these few brief minutes of overwhelming clarity assailing me through a barely registered haze or noise and sound and twisted guitar heroics and pummelling beats and…
I didn’t know which way to turn.
Of course, I didn’t know any of this as the evening progressed. The evening was weird enough already: “It’s a brave fucking band that follows Maria Iskariot,” I typed on social media following the second support set. I meant it. Three ladies and a drummer from somewhere in Belgium determined to singlehandedly revive the spirit of the early Nineties back when music mattered (to me) – i.e. little to do with the sluggish grunge and fake suburban metal of Pearl Jam acolytes, and much to do with the fiery, inclement, wastrel nature of outsider bands like Pixies and Bettie Serveert and anyone who grew up loving the punk side of Blondie – yes, bands that were considered ‘outsider’ once.
Maria Iskariot killed. Shredded. Ruled. Owned the entire crowd, from the moment the lady in the middle jumped straight into the audience and forced them to sing along – individually at first, then collectively – with words they couldn’t even pronounce let alone understand, but increasingly, lustily, shouted along with. She ran straight to the back, leapt onto speakers, pulled the same trick again, and beside her bandmates clashed guitars and thundered a mighty thunder: like all the aforementioned but with lashings of humour and fearless youth, and soul. Such a good feeling.
Of course, there was a Pixies cover. Of course, the entire place exploded.
I expected Tropical Fuckstorm to be incendiary, yes I did. How could I expect anything else? I am well familiar with the records, with Garth Liddiard’s mangled, twisted, warped, inspirational way around a guitar and his equally determined, contrary worldview. I am well versed in what he and his band represent, through their individuality and extreme understanding of the importance of rhythm, of togetherness. I already knew that they are one of the greatest rock bands to come into my orbit (my definition of rock, my definition of greatest).
Yes, they were as mangled, twisted, demented, wrenching, emotional, magnificent, together… as expected. (What an incredible band!)
Yes, the sky burst into flames and kept separating.
Yes, it was a thrill, an honour, a sheer visceral pleasure to be present in the presence in the present, to be HERE.
I just didn’t expect Tropical Fuckstorm to represent and embody everything that I throw away when I left Australia behind, when I left the persona of “Everett True” behind. Fuck, I miss that arsehole sometimes, much as I hate him. He was able for so many years to cover up the dull banal reality of my Clark Kent alter-ego.
And yes. The entire world stopped spinning, and everything made sense for a few brief moments as they roared their way through ‘You Let My Tyres Down’.
Finally, briefly, I was home.
CODA(S)
For reference, here is what I wrote earlier. Back when I could still write.
Whiny, maleficent malcontents. Bruising, beautiful brawlers. Out of tune, out of time, dissonant and a glorious sprawl of ugly loose-ends and shimmering dissonance. Anger, isolation, fuck you attitudinal beauty. Drug-fuelled inertia. Disgust and disillusionment given vent in a way no male American rock band has managed in two decades now. Jesus, this is so good. Jesus, this makes me feel so homesick – no not for fucking Brisbane but for my core city of Melbourne with all its rain-washed grimy streets and sun-burnt rock formations in the middle of the fucking beyond. Jesus, this makes me want to tackle that fucking right hand turn single-handed. Jesus, this makes me want to drink and brawl and fuck and fight and argue loudly with whoever the fuck comes into the vicinity, and go twirling round numerous beer-soaked dance-floors and laugh at that fucking excuse of a beard on your face. Jesus, but this is glorious even if the dweebs do round off the song about 10 minutes too early, just as it’s getting going and becoming Coloured Balls epic. Fuck death and depression when there is shit like this still happening, still being created out there in the world.
And again. Back when I could still write.
The Drones’ fourth album – the melancholy, incendiary Havilah – came out a couple of months ago in Australia (it’s out worldwide in January), and the hipsters and the diehards, the drunks and the seafarers have been foaming at the mouth ever since. And rightly so. New single, ‘The Minotaur’, contains the insouciant swagger and intricate guitars that have been so sadly lacking of late from Australian rock. Not for singer Gareth Liddiard the self-serving histrionics of a Daniel Johns or the laddish “charms” of a Powderfinger. He sounds possessed, the way all great rock singers sound possessed, as he beats the shit out of a stray vowel. The song is brutal, brilliant. Drums crack like Lewes firework displays, beats stutter to a halt among bruising repetition. You don’t need to understand lyrics to understand emotion.
This review is dedicated to James McMahon, R.I.P.