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When you're as boundary-pushing as Tropical Fuck Storm, I half expect a live album to mean the band will materialize out from the record player and into my living room. Or at least, that's what should happen when Inflatable Graveyard comes out on September 27th on Three Lobed Recordings, the specific performance recorded at Lincoln Hall in Chicago in October '22. We last spoke to Gareth (Gaz) Liddiard a few months before that recording, but a lot has happened since then, making it high time we got an update from the Aussie noisemakers.
What have you been up to lately? What have you been listening to, reading, or spending a lot of time doing?
Gareth Liddiard: We've been mixing our new record with our engineer mate Aaron Cupples. He's recorded my bands forever. That's all done now. Apart from that I've been walking the dog, chopping wood, and staying off the internet. I read Treasure Island for the first time this week. I didn't realize that it was the source of all pirate clichés, though it's a great little book. I've been reading a book called UFOs by Leslie Kean that's full of pretty credible people talking about seeing weird flying shit. All that conspiracy stuff like JFK and 911 and Anti-vax stuff has been around forever but it really amped up with the Q-Anon thing and became mainstream in a fringe way. Since then I can see conspiracy stuff has become the norm in more places in just the fringe. Someone somewhere has planned something. I can't help but wonder if this UFO/UAP shit is actually real or if I've become just another regular person who believes in whacked-out conspiracy theories. That's why I've been avoiding the internet. I'm waiting by my mailbox for the "new" Louis Ferdinand Celine book to finish its translation into English. I've been listening to Bert Jansch and Mississippi John Hurt and Prokofiev and Robert Wyatt. I met Tirzah recently and told her that her record Devotion is the best thing since Led Zeppelin IV. She laughed at me which was a relief. It's a silly thing to say but I do listen to more Led Zeppelin than most people. I know they're kind of silly but I have a theory where if someone doesn't think John Bonham is the greatest rock drummer of all time it is because they didn't listen to Led Zeppelin today. I've been reading Tony Iommi's book and he was Bonham’s best friend. He says Bonham was a massive cunt but Tony was good with the biff so he could deal with him. Celine was a cunt too but most iconoclasts are like that. I was driving 70mph on the highway once listening to "Into The Void" by Black Sabbath and my front right wheel came off my van and overtook me. It was an unpleasant experience.
Tropical Fuck Storm's Inflatable Graveyard (say that ten times fast) is your first-ever live album. What made you decide to embark on this journey?
The venue in Chicago offered to record the show and we just went from there. There wasn't much thought. Then I think we were in Nashville after that and it was Halloween and we drove past a house with an inflatable graveyard on their front lawn.
How do you approach performing when you know it’s being recorded for posterity? Is there a different energy to the show?
I'd forgotten we were recording by the time we got up to play. It's best not to think or know about it if you get the chance to record live. We were at Lincoln Hall in Chicago. The crew there are really nice and fun. They sent us to a Mexican joint across the road after soundcheck and we got loose so that helped.
The write-up for this album notes that the show functioned as a post-pandemic "pent-up creative" release. The last time we spoke with TFS you said COVID felt like "swimming through a thick wall of dog shit for months on end," so I was wondering if your feelings on those times and what came of it have changed or evolved?
I feel the same way as I did then. It just sucked arse. Bird Flu is next apparently and that has a 50% fatality rate. Can't wait for that.
Speaking of the last time we spoke, since then you’ve been up to some wildly creative output. There's your film Goody Goody Gumdrops, a collab with the Gizz, a covers album, and more! Is there anything you haven’t done, that is, anything you want to do next?
It might be fun to do a proper film soundtrack. We actually did a live soundtrack for No Country For Old Men which doesn't have a soundtrack believe it or not. We did that about seven or eight times in cinemas in Australia. We'd set up down in front of the screen. We're really good at that shit. I wish someone would ask us to do a soundtrack for them. My friend Jed did the soundtrack to the last Alien film and now he's rich. But I'm not gunning for riches, its just an interesting anecdote for the purpose of this interview. I'm fascinated with film sound, like all the foley and effects and how they re-record every single word of dialog in a studio after everything is filmed. Then there's the music of course, if it's done well. Then some poor bastard has to mix it all. Kira Roessler from Black Flag does that these days. She works on mixes for stuff like the newer Mad Max films. I'm a Hollywood insider just so you know. TZM or TMZ or whatever it is. The Gizz thing happened because they came up to our place in the bush and made that album Fishing For Fishies. They work really fast so we had some spare time and we all had a jam that went for half an hour. Then later we cut it down into a song-length thing and sang over it. We did the film clip for it in our neighbor's house. Bob is our neighbor and rents us the place we live in. He had this amazing old place on the river but it got destroyed in a flood not long after we filmed that clip. Our place was okay because it was about 20 feet higher up. I think the only covers on our covers record were the Hendrix tune and the Stooges tune. The rest were fake covers of fake bands that we invented.
Speaking of covers, you're one of the few bands who are notoriously good at them (see: "Stayin' Alive," "This Perfect Day," "Ann," etc.) What’s your approach when interpreting another artist’s work?
If you’re choosing good songs then it's hard to fuck it up. We're usually doing covers when we're all wasted and partying and we don’t record them very well. But they sound fine in the end. Initially, we’d only do Australian songs, just so we had some kind of limit because there's a million great songs on the planet. "Stayin' Alive" is by an Australian band. We did a Saints song with Amy Taylor from Amyl and The Sniffers when she was up here hanging out during the pandemic, a Lost Animal tune that is totally killer. We didn't do any AC/DC though. As easy as AC/DC is to play it’s just too hard to beat them ya know? They're huge worldwide but here in Oz they’re a religion so it's hard to compete. The Talking Heads "Heaven" cover was just a timely thing. Everyone living in internet comfort is getting all politically radical and utopian and that song nails that. The Stooges song is the kind of song Fi likes. She loves the romantic stuff. And all the girls do, as do I. This is the only band I've been in where I know when everyone is washing their hair and exactly how everyone is feeling at any given moment. It beats the shit out of being in bands with boys.
How do you feel looking back on your catalog? Do you still like or relate to your past releases?
Yeah I do. I love all the TFS stuff. I wouldn't do it if I didn’t. I fucked up some of the mixes on our last record but I will rectify that. I was out of my mind during the pandemic and we had a major equipment breakdown in our studio during lockdown so shit got fucked up but we'll fix that. But I dig the TFS stuff, I dig the Drones stuff that came before, and the solo shit I’ve done, and the Springtime stuff I did. The point is to play stuff that you like. The kind of stuff you wish existed. I’ve recorded plenty of shit that sucks but I just delete it. Sometimes you outgrow old stuff as a songwriter but I’m also a guitar player so I just go bananas on that. I’m not precious. I like Harry Partch and the Murder Junkies and Maria Callas and Schoenberg. I don’t care as long as it's nuts. I hate most popular stuff, indie, or whatever. Everyone just conforms without knowing they’re doing it. It’s not in my DNA to do that. We're in the universe, we are part of the universe and you can just do what you want with art. If you want. Then you die so why not use your imagination without pooping your pants about other people's opinions? Most new popular and semi-popular music is all conservative bullshit pretending to be rad.
Your next show is back in Chicago, the birthplace of the live record, and then it’s off on a huge U.S. tour with so many great openers. Is there anything you’re looking forward to or anyone you’re excited to play with?
We're playing mainly with Michael Beach who is a Californian guy who lives in Melbourne. He recorded our new record and plays beautiful soulful stuff. I don't know most of the bands who will be playing with us, but in Nashville, we're playing with Cassie Berman's band. I love Silver Jews so that's a big deal for me. There's not many bands that lean on lyrics and they did it so well. I love that shit.
After the USA tour, what are some future plans for TFS?
Two weeks off then we tour Europe and the UK. And then next year we'll put a record out and try and tour the US twice at least to make up for lost time.
Inflatable Graveyard is out September 27th on Three Lobed Recordings.
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