Tropical Fuck Storm’s New Single Proves They’re One Of The Best Bands In Australia
'G.A.F.F.' is another abrasive and extraordinary cut from the supergroup.
The critic and theorist Mark Fisher once wrote of the “slow cancellation of the future” — the notion that our culture has become stupefyingly backwards looking, no longer able to tell convincing stories about how society can evolve or move forward.
These days, that phrase feels ominously literal. Several global climate tipping points have been reached. Warming has now been locked in. We are staring down the barrel of a mass extinction, a total devastation of a way of life that will bring with it more war, more famine, more suffering.
Moreover, none of this is surprising news. Over the last few years, the apocalypse has settled over our lives like a fine dust. To borrow another Fisher analogy, we have come to resemble the main characters of dystopian sci-fi film Children of Men, not fighting against our terminal lot but making some melancholy piece with it, watching our content, and going to our jobs, and living in the shadow of this great eventuality.
The word of the epoch is “fatigue.” And it is fatigue that underpins ‘G.A.F.F.’, the new single by Australian supergroup Tropical Fuck Storm, who have made their living writing barbed wire tunes about ennui.
Sonically, ‘G.A.F.F.’ resembles the songs planted like mines across the band’s last release, Braindrops, mixing the funk of Fela Kuti with the abrasive, cracked asphalt sounds of lead singer Gareth Liddiard’s other act, The Drones. But there is something darker going on here; something more burnt out. While Braindrops diagnosed problems with a furious glint in its eyes, ‘G.A.F.F.’ is more tired, outlining a list of global horrors as though they are items on a shopping list.
And so what’s the point? Liddiard shrugs. A song like ‘G.A.F.F.’ isn’t going to save the world. The world is past of the point of saving. It is an electric guitar solo played in the plaza while Rome burns. It’s not music made to change minds. It’s music made because, simply put, there’s nothing else to do.
Watch ‘G.A.F.F.’ in full below:
Tropical Fuck Storm’s new album Deep States will drop on August 20.