Australia’s Tropical Fuck Storm (TFS) is an anarchic force of nature, a chaotic whirlpool of raw sound and mind-bending energy. Comprised of Gareth Liddiard, Fiona Kitschin, Erica Dunn, and Lauren Hammel, this quartet invites you into their brilliantly deranged world with Inflatable Graveyard, their debut live album.
Capturing their October 22, 2022, performance at Chicago’s Lincoln Hall, the album is a wild, sonic document of a band at the height of its powers during the “Fuck the Rain Away” tour.
Spanning 11 songs over an hour of volcanic sound, Inflatable Graveyard is like a psychedelic séance, resurrecting tracks from their three studio albums—2018’s A Laughing Death in Meatspace, 2019’s Braindrops, and 2021’s Deep States—along with electrifying covers of the Stooges’ “Ann” and the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive.”
It’s a “Greatest Hits” album in the truest, most distorted sense: a collection of their weirdest, most beautiful moments, trapped in the amber of live performance, buzzing with almost primordial energy.
For TFS, the “Fuck the Rain Away” tour was more than a series of delayed shows; it was revenge. The pandemic rudely interrupted their original plans, keeping them grounded in Australia when they were ready to tear up stages worldwide.
But TFS is nothing if not adaptive, and during their two-year exile, they channeled their creative energy into new projects. In that time, they released Deep States, collaborated with fellow Aussie weirdos King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, and even produced a feature film, Goody Goody Gumdrops. When the world reopened, the band returned to the road with new material in hand—and a pent-up, explosive energy.
And what better place to unleash that energy than a sold-out Lincoln Hall? Inflatable Graveyard opens with the bizarrely catchy “Men’s Only Costume Party”—a reggae-infused oddity born from a jam in the tour van—and then quickly detonates into the fevered madness of “Braindrops.”
From there, the band spirals into a kaleidoscope of furious guitars, squawking synths, and rhythms that feel like pulling your brain through a funhouse mirror. Fan favorites like “You Let My Tyres Down” and “Chameleon Paint” are given room to mutate into even more unhinged versions of themselves, with dissonant Zappa-esque tantrums and eerie, hypnotic breakdowns.
The live setting amplifies their restless experimentation, transforming tracks like “Antimatter Animals” and “Paradise” into dazzling, otherworldly creations that twist your expectations at every turn.
The encore is where TFS truly cements its place in the pantheon of experimental rock supergroups. After a soaring, elongated version of “Two Afternoons,” the band dives headfirst into an explosive, genre-bending cover of the Bee Gees’ disco classic, “Stayin’ Alive,” with Erica Dunn taking over lead vocals.
In typical TFS fashion, they twist the song’s iconic falsetto into a hallucinogenic fever dream, blending catharsis and chaos in a way that makes you want to both mosh and make out. It’s a fitting close to an album that balances on the razor’s edge of unpredictability and celebration.
And there’s a poignant undercurrent running through the chaos. In the months following this recording, Fiona Kitschin battled cancer—and won.
Listening to the defiant chorus of “Stayin’ Alive” through that lens turns what might seem like a cheeky cover into something more profound, even premonitory.
Tropical Fuck Storm is a band that thrives on turmoil and laughs in the face of pandemics, illness, and a world unraveling at the seams. Their resilience, their refusal to stay down, makes them feel unstoppable.
And Inflatable Graveyard is the proof. It’s not just a live album; it’s a document of survival, a celebration of chaotic creation in the face of adversity. Tropical Fuck Storm, no matter what the world throws at them, will keep on raging.
Check out Inflatable Graveyard by Tropical Fuck Storm on Bandcamp here.
Leave a Reply