by Dominic Acito (@mycamgrlromance)
Melbourne, Australia's Tropical Fuck Storm are back touring the U.S. to promote their new live album Inflatable Graveyard. I sat down with the band the day they arrived in Chicago for the first show of the tour, a concert performed “in the round” where the band played surrounded by fans. Before the show, a jet-lagged TFS chatted with me about their writing process, how they prepared for the tour, and told tales of playing the Sydney Opera House.
photo credit: Jamie Wdziekonski
Dominic Acito: Is there a particular reason you chose the Chicago show for the live album? Do you have a special relationship with the city, or have you been recording every show and decided that was the one that sounded best?
Gareth Liddiard: No, the venue offered to record. They just had the equipment. During soundcheck, they said they could record, so we said, yeah. We didn't plan to do it.
DA: I was actually in the audience at that concert, and it was such a great night. The energy in the room was fantastic.
Erica Dunn: It was extremely fun; we were sort of swinging midway through and just having a really good time.
DA: Did you choose the setlist knowing that there was going to be a live album at some point?
GL: We didn't, we just forgot about it.
ED: I think that was the best part. I think if we had remembered that we were recording it, or if we had ever thought we would be actually releasing it, we'd be freaked out. I just forgot all about it. Then we had the revelation later when we had not been playing at all last year and realized how secretly we had a live record that, you know, we felt really good about.
GL: I'd forgotten about it. I looked in my bag and there was a USB thumb drive in there, and I went, oh, that's that fucking Chicago show.
ED: When you found it, at that time I think we were all feeling like, will we ever play again? Like, could we play our instruments? We were in this real tundra of existential despair. So it was a really nice find.
DA: When you guys put together a set list, do you feel like it's a different thought process than album sequencing?
GL: Usually, you have a peak in the middle. So it builds to the middle; it goes down and builds again.
ED: In terms of album flow, no, we were just representing what the live show was and where we kind of got into the pocket. That’s the best thing about playing live all the time or being on tour.
GL: Yeah, you really can pace yourself. It's like 70 minutes long, so it ends up being two LPs. We just got it today; it's up at the merch table.
DA: Are there live records that you like to emulate or that you listen to instead of their studio releases?
GL: That's Hard Rain by Bob Dylan. That's amazing. You wouldn't think Bob Dylan's a live album guy, you know? Yeah, that one's great because they're all really raw. They're all on speed.
ED: Oh, that's a great one because those songs are interpreted in a really different way. That is a really cool thing about a live record. It's just sort of unexpected, you know, and bands end up being more comfortable with the songs.
GL: Yeah, we write them when we record them. We kind of have to learn them again anyway.
ED: Another great live recording, Sam Cooke’s One Night Stand! Live at the Harlem Square Club. The audience is just in there as a participant or another part of the band. It's so cool. On Inflatable Graveyard, with the Chicago audience, you can tell that we're being welcomed. It's very special.
DA: Speaking of songs changing live, do you intentionally change your songs for live performances?
GL: We just let them do what they do.
Lauren Hammel: Yeah, I think a lot of the songs, the way that they're recorded on an album, wouldn’t translate live. There’s too much space or something like that. We want to play those songs live, so we rewrite them a bit. You want to see the band that you like rocking and doing what they do. I think it's fine to rewrite them.
DA: I think a live audience is sometimes more patient with long intros or taking time to build things up.
GL: Yeah, they kind of get longer, don't they?
ED: Some of them we stretch out where they start and end.
LH: We don't even know what we're doing until we start playing.
ED: You want spontaneity. Otherwise, you're just going through the motions.
LH: Yeah, we rehearse all the songs, obviously, but we don't rehearse what happens between the songs. I think that’s why if gear breaks or whatever then we’re able to more easily fill that space instead of grinding to a halt.
GL: Yeah, improvise through it.
ED: I was watching, not to say that we're in this league, obviously, at all, but I was watching a really great interview with Pharaoh Sanders, who was talking about when he improvised with Coltrane. He was asking, like, how do you work it out? When should you improvise? Because it's like, we don't talk at all. We talk when we're playing. Then, most of the time, we're just working out what we're eating. I was reminded the other day because, for this tour, we had one rehearsal, which was really kind of a sloppy rehearsal, and then we just made dinner and that took up most of the time. We just had food.
DA: Do you have a wider pool of songs that you pull from when performing so that you can keep the shows feeling fresh?
ED: We did this time. Then we also have a new album coming out. So, we're trying to work out whether we should touch on that, but those songs are completely unknown, and we haven't been to some cities for a long time. We consider, you know, what works best. We also did a European tour, so we don't want to be bored. So a couple of elements going into working out what's next.
DA: Are your rehearsals particularly regimented? Are there set times for practice?
GL: [Laughs] Regimented? No.
ED: We basically- it's more for peace of mind. Is our gear working?
GL: Yeah, do the pedals work? Can you remember the notes? That's the thing. That's it, really.
ED: We all live about an hour and a half away from each other and we're lazy and stubborn. So we managed one rehearsal.
GL: [Laughs] I thought we did very well, but then the house is next to a river and it’s a really beautiful spot in the countryside, and we've got a boat.
LH: The boat's broken. [Laughs] We'll have to organize another rehearsal so we can fix the boat.
GL: We swim. We fix things.
LH: Talking about the gigs also counts as rehearsal.
GL: We make lists. Many lists. We have a whiteboard that's covered in lists. Terrible, bad album titles, basically. We need a fucking album title. Any ideas?
LH: I think it’s good not be so regimented and everything, whether it's at a show or even in rehearsals, because even doing a rehearsal can end up being kind of robotic. You can fall into that trap of, well, it has to be like this, or it has to be like that. You kind of lose your flair if something goes wrong. Then maybe you start getting stressed about it if something unexpected happens.
GL: If you care too much, sucks, yeah? It sounds silly, but if you care less when disaster strikes, which it always does, then you don't cry; you just keep rocking through it.
ED: We're notorious for things going wrong quite a lot. Day one, and my stuff starts breaking. It’s just the way it is.
GL: I mean, it's just always the way it is. Things always break.
DA: Do you find a tour to be a good time for writing? I know you just finished an album, but I feel like being in the United States during an election year is pretty good fodder for some Tropical Fuck Storm songs.
GL: There's plenty of that. I don't really write on tour; people do, and good luck to them, but the people that do, I'd say 90% of them, are using amphetamines, and I'm being quite serious.
LH: You're doing enough on tour, I think. You’re getting material.
GL: If you do write on tour, you'd end up writing about hotels, and you know it'd sound like "it's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll."
ED: You mean brilliant?
GL: I mean, that’s a fucking great song.
ED: I think, in a funny way, though, that on an unconscious level, the tank is getting filled up. Just little tidbits. With all the imagery and strange other human connections we do a lot of capturing.
GL: I just write down all the all the weird things people say. Then, when it comes time to write songs, I've got a book full of those.
DA: Are there American idioms that have struck you as particularly interesting?
GL: I can't remember at the moment. Halloween is always weird. I know it's not an idiom, but pumpkins. Americans love pumpkins. Fucking pumpkin spice lattes. Why did they invent that? That's fucking stupid. Then, when it comes to Halloween, who is the guy selling the pumpkins? Because he must be like a billionaire. Because there's like millions and millions of pumpkins all of a sudden.
We did the live album last time we were in Chicago, and then we went to Nashville. One morning, we were going to breakfast. It was October, Halloween.
ED: There was like a pumpkin massacre outside, and everyone was really upset about all the pumpkins smashed on the street. There was a really sad sense of mourning.
GL: Yeah, for these pumpkins. Then there was a – someone had a front yard with inflatable tombstones and shit. Then we went, oh, look, an inflatable graveyard. So, I wrote that down, and yeah, then when it came time we needed an album name, I just looked in the book. Oh, there's one. Yeah. That'll do it.
DA: Speaking of being in America, are there other things that you really like about just being here? Are there things that you stock up on to bring home?
GL: It's hard to carry too much stuff around, but if you want to buy music gear, it's amazing. It's worth it.
ED: It's not cigarettes anymore. Cigarettes used to be cheap and wonderful. I used to feel like Santa Claus, you know, coming home. With Marlboro's and all that. Also all the other sick packaging that we don't get in Australia.
DA: Gareth, I understand that you have a live album with Spencer P. Jones and then also an MK Ultra one. Are there any plans to release those albums?
GL: Oh yeah, I've got to get the Spencer one. Because Spencer died, his wife has taken over his estate. So, I have to go through her, which is fine, but if it were through Spencer, I would literally mix the live album, send it to him, and he'd go, oh, yeah, cool, sick, let's put it out. Now, there are more moving parts. It's a pain in the ass. I've got to talk to the sound engineer who has that recording. I haven't got much more. I haven't got much more in the vault. I'm doing a solo thing. Yeah, that's coming together with lots of live stuff.
The MK Ultra thing, I don't know if we'll put that out, but we recorded it live at the Sydney Opera House. You know, I might have to revisit that.
DA: Didn't you open for Band of Horses for that show?
GL: We opened for Band of Horses, and they played the worst gig they ever played. They were jet lagged, and they hadn't slept for ages. They'd been awake all night, and they were drinking all day. Ben, the singer, lost his voice. They played terribly, and the keyboard player got up at one point and just vomited on stage and kept playing.
ED: Is this when you ordered pizza and had a pizza fight?
GL: Yeah, it was a great time. All the guys, all the Band of Horses guys, had all got Sydney Opera House tattoos that day. A tattoo guy came backstage to the Opera House because they were thrilled to play there because it's so beautiful. Then it just turned out to be a fucking disaster. They nearly broke up.
ED: It's like when athletes do get the Olympic rings tattooed, and then they get them removed when they don't get the gold.
GL: But then the funny thing was that the band went home, and we hung around. So, MK Ultra was mainly The Drones guys, and then we’d invited a million friends, and we were all hanging out.
Band of Horses went home, and then all of the staff of the Opera House went home. We came out at one point. We walked all around the Opera House, and there was no one there. We were practicing our bowing on the massive, big opera stage. We were there all night. We had all this booze. There was a bar that was just there. When we ran out of booze, we went to the actual Opera House bar and just helped ourselves. We had pizza fights. There's pianos everywhere so it was very musical. We had a fucking great night. About four or five, five a.m., we said we might as well leave.
We went to the front door, and there was this security desk, but no one was there, and it had a walkie-talkie. Dan from The Drones and MK Ultra just picked up a walkie-talkie and goes, "Breaker breaker, is anyone there?" Then all of a sudden, this kind of SWAT team came because the fucking Sydney Opera House is so prominent that there are literally guys with machine guns somewhere in there all the time. They hadn't noticed us there.
Then they kicked us out. I had a beer, and I was about to finish it off, and one of these cops, they were in black with guns and everything, just grabs the beer off me and goes, "you can't drink that," and I've just drunk 50 of these fucking things. But yeah, we recorded that show, so maybe I should take a look.
LH: I remember when we were at the Opera House playing with Bikini Kill and then just sitting outside waiting. The people working said, “We don't have anything about you playing tonight.” They wouldn't let us in for, like, an hour. I had to go up the chain and get someone to come down.
GL: Yeah, it's bureaucratic. That's why they all went home. Literally, everyone had left.
DA: It must be interesting to write in a band like this because I think of TFS as a supergroup. When you think of traditional songwriting groups, one person writes the lyrics, and another writes the music, but you guys all have experience writing great solo stuff. How does that figure into the writing process?
GL: The first thing we did with this record was me and Lauren got together, and we bought a couple of new sort of boutique drum machines that are pretty random, and some guy in America hand-makes them and sort of kind of weird, rare things.
LH: We love to spend money on toys we don't know how to use.
GL: We did that and then we wired them up together, and we had an old cassette four-track. We had a few other synths and things and spent an evening just drinking and just trying to figure out how to use these fucking things, and because we do it all wrong, it comes out in a weird way. We had these recordings and just learned how to play those things on our instruments.
LH: Yeah, then we picked the best parts.
ED: I took these recordings, listened through the car speakers, and then drove around thinking of melodies.
GL: It's totally doing the wrong way around. So, the minute we're doing it, we're doing a TFS record. It's not like the songs are written prior and then. We do it all in the studio.
DA: So, it's very collaborative.
GL: Yeah, and lyrics, too. If Rico (Erica Dunn) is singing a song, she's written it. If I'm singing a song, I've written it. But then, someone will say, well, chop that bit out. Or I'm going to sing this over that. Or someone will say something funny, and that will end up in a line in a song. So, you know, we help each other. The whole thing is, well, if there's a gap and I need to fill it, someone else will go, well, say this. So, it's a desperate attempt to finish a record.
ED: But they become, like, puzzles that we have to solve.
DA: At the beginning of Inflatable Graveyard, a song plays when you guys walk out on stage. It’s a reggae song, and it sounds like you are singing. Is that you?
GL: No, that's Dan from The Drones and MK Ultra. Back when GarageBand came out, and The Drones would be on tour in Europe, you’d get fucking bored in the car. You’d go in the back and go on GarageBand and make songs. You’d put headphones on, and then you roll up a piece of paper, and you go to the microphone on the computer. The rolled-up piece of paper covers all the fan noise and everyone talking and shit.
Then you go, “chuck us the lead” and then they pass the lead back to you. You put it on, you play your new song on the car stereo for everyone. Dan Luscombe was very, very good. He has heaps of songs like this. There's another one about how God made computers and they are mankind's tutors. Things like that. That one has a reggae preset on GarageBand. The one on Inflatable Graveyard is 'Men's Only Costume Party.' So the children will be sad because they're not invited. The women will be sad, but they will recover. It’s a men's only costume party and come as your favorite celebrity or movie star. It's a really good song.
Yeah, it's fucking hilarious. We thought, when are we ever going to release anything like that? So, I phoned Dan and said, TFS are making a live album, and we needed it because there was no music at the start. So then, on the recording, there was house music. So, if we used the house music and played Bad Brains, we'd have to get permission from Bad Brains. So, I just rang Dan and asked if I could use that. The fuckin’ song that he recorded 15 years ago.
DA: What can you tell us about the upcoming record? Do you have a release date that you're eyeing?
GL: I don't have a name. But the next year or so.
ED: Again, we were in this position where we hadn't played for a long time, and we were just thinking we would get together and see what happens. Initially, we started out thinking we'd just put out a seven-inch, and then that grew into being an EP. Then, it grew into a record.
LH: We put all that time away for recording and recorded in like a day or two, and thought, oh, well, we may as well keep going because we've all taken time off work, we can start writing more, and that's kind of how it turned into an album, a couple of weeks out.
GL: We tried to be alluring in one song, and I think we did pretty good.