The more you continue to listen their fourth outing, the more it becomes evident that their immersive, whirlwind of psychedelic sprawl and dizzying dadaist spectacle – Fairyland Code – is a galvanising opus of incredible political bite, musical ferocity, and lyrical ingenuity.
Across ten visceral tracks, the Melbourne quartet conjure a sonic apocalypse of dystopian art punk: snarling guitars, sludgy and pulsating blues grooves, and surreal narratives that unfold like a landslide’s carnage, broadcast with the fervour of a raving street preacher at times. Each song’s character battles collapse and existential unraveling.
Gareth Liddiard’s baritone delivers sardonic lyricism shot through with hazy, poetic passion. The chaos is engineered to showcase both the intimate and epic sides of the bands repertoire, just as the opening salvos of “Irukandji Syndrome” and “Goon Show” demonstrate.
The band’s signature acid‑infused wordplay shines brightest in “Stepping on a Rake” which is a tangled mess of irony and kinetic guitars, while “Teeth Marché” adds new wave sheen and feminist bravado, courtesy of Erica Dunn’s pulsing bass line and kaleidoscopic visuals. There are discordant nods to misplaced devotion and climate collapse in equal measure; the track’s luscious tension is undeniable.
At the album’s midpoint, arriving far too soon, the title track “Fairyland Codex” takes a meta‑thematic lurch where instrumentation ebbs and flows like seismic creaks. “A village in hell is waiting for you,” sings the trio of vocalists, Liddiard with Fiona Kitschin and Dunn, as they ride the tension‑and‑release arc that defines the record. The snarl meets harmony vocal interplay is perhaps the album’s secret weapon.
Perhaps the album’s most obvious and wildest political
rant, “Dunning Kruger’s Loser Cruiser”, sounds like a frenzied preacher
chastising a disenfranchised congregation. Its unhinged theatricality is
thrilling, even if it feels slightly overindulgent by the album’s end.
It’s the one moment where the chaos maybe revels in itself a bit too
much.
Still, the groove‑fueled “Bloodsport” grounds everyone
again with its funk‑inflected Talking Heads sensibility and punchy
stuttering guitar breaks. Tight and hard‑edged, it balances cerebral
lyricism and raw energy, proving that TFS can go toe‑to‑toe with
danceable art‑rock without losing bite.
Later tracks like “Joe Meek Will Inherit the Earth” evoke
late‑60s psychedelia, as the title suggests, while “Bye Bye Snake Eyes”
and the brief “Moscovium” round things off with ominous rumble and
reflective closure.
If there’s a critique, it’d be on density, the album feels
super compressed with a hectoring pressure that barely lets up despite
some smart sequencing choices chopping up the pacing as well as it can
to ride the turbulence. More moments of atmospheric space could have
given the emotional catharsis room to breathe.
Nevertheless, Fairyland Codex is Tropical Fuck Storm at their
incendiary and acerbic best. It’s a freak‑show with a serious heart.
Songs emerge like fractured sonic portraits of people caught
mid‑collapse, a metafictional exploration of how civilization unravels,
yet how art nonetheless rallies defiance. Its grievances are vast but at
its core lies a potent question: amid all this ruin, in this ”golden
age of assholes” does music matter? The answer is a thunderous yes, even
as they laugh with mania in the wreckage.
