Album Review: Tropical Fuck Storm – Braindrops

There can be no doubt that Tropical Fuck Storm has reinvigorated Gareth Liddiard’s creativity. Fans of The Drones used to have to wait years between albums, but Braindrops follows on from Tropical Fuck Storm’s belting debut a mere 15 months later, and it’s every bit as good. Braindrops is similarly distorted and beaten out of shape, with recognisably off-kilter beats and discordant guitar meltdowns. 

Liddiard by his own admission is most inspired when pursuing “weird shit”, although the ease with which seemingly reasonable views and behaviour are manipulated by powerful social media actors seems to run a close second. There are plenty of gloomy, grubby crawls through all types of dystopia and despair, but perhaps most impressively of all, is the skewed attack on fake news in Maria 63. It begins with soft, unaccompanied singing before unravelling into an alt-right-lampooning tale of a Mossad agent travelling to Buenos Aires to assassinate a Nazi witch who telepathically steals warp drive engine blueprints from aliens. It is an inspired, mind-boggling yarn that culminates in an orgy of detuned dissonance. We really have to appreciate Tropical Fuck Storm while they’re around because no one else can make dense political rackets such twisted fun.