BRAINDROPS is the second album released by Australian punk band Tropical Fuck Storm in 2019. It's week 70 which means I just get to go on about how much I like this record, but I wanted to do a deeper sort of analysis of what I think is going on within this album.
As the title suggests, I think one of the biggest themes of this album is the concept of "letting go", none more obviously than in the refrain of THE HAPPIEST GUY AROUND when they literally chant "When you ever gonna learn to let things go?" but I think it runs deeper than that.
I think the idea of letting go largely stems from the constant shifting and changing state of life and the universe. From the first track PARADISE the forces of change are displayed as utterly outside of human control- "Everything dies and that's the way it's always been. No joy, no sorrow, nothing is spared". The song is about this doomed, one sided relationship but still manages to expand to this clattering and fantastically noisey cacophany by the end of it's 6 minute runtime, the guitar work sounds throttled in the quiet parts, but twisted and vengeful in the loud parts. As it draws to a close it just gets louder and uglier and more imposing before it collapses under it's own weight in the last few seconds.
THE PLANET OF STRAW MEN depicts this race of people who chase these symbolic victories in the form of wanting a "coup de grace" whilst these Russian and Chinese spies do all the real dirty work, spinning these lies about "picking Chinese cotton on the moon soon", these people are being subtley forced to hold onto and care about things that don't matter or don't exist, hence the "planet of straw men".
HAPPIEST GUY AROUND represents this returns to animalistic instinctual living, utterly free of concern: "You know the whole world's fucked, get over it//And everybody's out to get ya//You ain't here for that long anyway, if it makes you feel better, man". The song has this giddy energy from the drums and vocal performance above this kind of melancholy guitar line and then halfway thru it just collapses on itself entirely before picking up again for the last chorus. The songwriting is on absolute top form for this track. It leads into this breezy psycedelic track called MARIA 62 which links to the last song on the album called MARIA 63; but we'll get to that later.
We then get the title track which kind of feels like an overture of the whole record in some ways. Liddiard's vocals come off as these deranged rambles about drug dealers and buying Chinese ray-bans. I think the song is meant to be this monologue from this guy who's completely transcended the trappings and regularity of modern living, concluding in "It's really hard to tell//How far you are from knowing your heart". The song has this undercurrent that leads to ASPIRIN, this hollow and harrowing song about loss, Liddiard remembers the departed through their earthly posessions like sneakers and coats left around the house, in stark contrast to the anti-materialism displayed or hinted at earlier. The track ends with a pretty explicit reference to death, and fear of it happening to oneself: But you'll be fine//'Cause you could always see a light up in the tunnel//I got a feeling it'll happen soon to me". In my mind this, as well as being an incredible song on it's own, explores how impossible it is to let go of the past, and how inexorably tied to the places and people around us we are.
After the track wraps up we get DESERT SANDS OF VENUS which is this desolate instrumental track that really encapsulates the hopeless feeling of being stranded on a foreign planet. The way it connects ASPIRIN and the last track is incredible.
MARIA 62 and MARIA 63 form this delayed 1-2 punch on the album. The tracks are in reference to Maria Orsic, a figure in Nazi mythology. For those uninitiated, the Nazi regime was heavily interested in utilising the occult and Orsic (supposedly, according to some, etc) was at least partially responcible to Hitler's rise to power. In the two songs, we see see the narrator initially somehow catch a glimpse of Orsic, who initally tells him "you won't remember me" in this increasingly disembodied voice towards the end of MARIA 62, and then finds her "daughter" years later who he really suspects to be Orsic herself, an apparently immortal being- "Oh, Maria//Is it a blessing or a curse//How all your men die with the Earth//And yet your life is endless?"
The narrator's search for Maria ends with him going on the insane and destructive rant that builds to this apocalyptic climax that dwarves the rest of the track, whereas 62 and the majority of 63 are isolated and quiet, the end of 63 (and hence the album) is huge and imposing and terrible. I think it represents how destructive hanging onto one thing from your past (literally, in terms of the tracks being split apart in the tracklist) can be, and how some things are better left unremembered.
This leads to my closing point: I think the album suggests the nature of people forming any kind of emotional reliance or connection with anything is inherently self destructive. The album chooses, deliberately, to focus on all the negatives and "bad endings" of these kinds of scenarios; be it a poorly resolved breakup, death of a friend or finding out the Nazi conspiracy theory you followed to the end ended up being real in the worst possible way. It implies that both caring not at all and too much will both end miserably, and even if you aren't consciously doing one or the other tragedy will still come knocking. But despite this, I think the album does have room for optimism. I'd like to think it's kind of a cautionary tale, things taken to the extreme, etc. Whatever way you look at it, the album is absolutely incredible, everything about it is just masterfully executed. I doubt I'll ever get bored of it. Good album!
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