There’s a ton of killer music coming from Down Under right now, with much of it revolving around Melbourne’s Milk! Records. Tropical Fuck Storm aren’t on that label, but the Melbourne band’s single “You Let My Tyres Down” might get my vote for song of the year.
It’s a shambling, mercurial opus that evokes early Nick Cave, or the boozy, ramshackle vibe of Neil Young’s masterful “Tonight’s the Night” album from 1974, similarly full of exasperation, cynicism and indignation. It’s a perfect anthem for the Trump era, its Aussie roots and lyrical references notwithstanding.
Ostensibly, the song is about a woman being held in custody “for the wounding of a rent cop / and a ram raid in Sunshine,” who bets that her lawyer can cut her a plea deal. It’s filled with characters seemingly out of a permanent nowhere class of people forever consigned to the outside looking in, with the predominant vibe being conveyed, essentially, that we’re fucked. “But then I grew up around her family,” singer and bandleader Gareth Liddiard sings, “and they were such a bunch of losers / Anchored only to each other / on a sea of Vodka Cruisers,” the latter being an actual packaged drink.
The debauched situation deepens in the next verse. “I picked her car up from the depot / I had my lunch at China Rose / And then I snorted half a gram / of Australia’s finest homemade coke.”
The band is a supergroup of sorts, with members of Liddiard’s former band The Drones, the excellent post-punk outfit Mod Con and High Tension. The whole album, “A Laughing Death in Meatspace,” packs a wallop, with strong songs and weird twists and turns.
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