Released: 28/01/22
At times we’re tempted to call Tropical Fuck Storm's Deep States a protest album, though it’s not quite. The band is far too wary of the self-importance attached to songs in the didactic mode. “We make pop records,” frontman Gareth Liddiard says, “that don’t deny we’re all in a bit of trouble here.” But Tropical Fuck Storm does their preaching on the sly, always cognisant of the fact they are making pop music, after all, no matter how avant-garde or “out there” it gets. Deep States comes complete with Q drops, nods to the January 6th Capitol Riot, a riff on pizzagate, MAGAs squaring off with Antifas, waterboarded Martians, dangerous cults from Heaven’s Gate to The Shining Path and, not to be outdone, Romeo agents who bed us at night only to betray us by morning. We live in a world in which the bizarre has become the normative, and Tropical Fuck Storm plumbs that paradox.