TROPICAL FUCK STORM, FAIRLYLAND CODEX

Australian experimental rock band Tropical Fuck Storm built their reputation on noise, humor, and a kind of philosophical chaos. Formed by singer and guitarist Gareth Liddiard and singer and bassist Fiona Kitschin, the band has spent the past seven years pulling rock apart and rearranging it into something unpredictable. Liddiard has said that everyone in TFS is neurotic to a degree and calls neurosis and delusion essential to how they work. That mix sits at the core of their music. Their songs are restless and full of left turns that make sense only in their own universe. I’m not sure there’s a clear way to describe their music. It moves faster than any label you try to attach to it.

Fairyland Codex, the band’s fourth album, builds on their love of collapse and reconstruction. The title comes from the idea of a codex, a book of clues to places that no longer exist, which the band saw as a perfect expression of their world-building approach to sound. The album feels like flipping through a weathered book where each page opens onto a new and shifting reality. It began as a song about leaving Earth for Mars and dying on arrival, then expanded into what guitarist and singer Erica Dunn calls “a spinning wheel of different worlds to dip into, each song a sort of planet on its own.” Each one, she says, immerses listeners “in the chaos of a fateful landslide, picking out the characters that litter the impending collapse of society.”

A sense of unrest and experimentation shapes the record’s movement, one moment tangled, the next oddly clear. Some songs were captured live after long runs on tour, others pieced together from sequencer jams and late-night noise. Each track sits somewhere between order and breakdown. Liddiard and Dunn’s guitars grind and twist against the pulsing rhythms of Kitschin’s bass and Lauren Hammel’s drumming. Voices rise and weave through the noise, with Liddiard’s delivery cutting through the mix and balanced by the calm and clarity of Kitschin and Dunn. Together they create songs that feel close to collapsing but never do.

Built on instinct and guided by humor used almost as a form of survival, Fairyland Codex is an album that’s sometimes disorienting, sometimes tense, sometimes calm, sometimes absurd, always unpredictable, and oddly welcoming.