The recent Cellophane Honeymoon tour was a mini-festival of Tropical Fuck Storm’s own making. The band, founded by The Drones’ frontperson Gareth Liddiard and bass player Fiona Kitschin, pitched the touring event as the “antithesis of the great corporate festival swindle,” a salient claim given how punters have turned away from major festivals in recent times.

The inaugural Cellophane Honeymoon tour visited Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Castlemaine across late March and early April. Tropical Fuck Storm were joined by mates C.O.F.F.I.N, Cool Sounds and MOD CON. It was TFS’s return to live performance after a year of downtime.

The band – which also includes guitarist/vocalist Erica Dunn (MOD CON) and drummer Lauren Hammel (High Tension) – were last seen backing up Modest Mouse and Beach Fossils on the Daydream tour in April 2023. These shows occurred just a few months after Kitschin was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer.

The foursome will head to Europe in May and June for Primavera Sound and a bunch of shows supporting Bikini Kill. It’s their first overseas trip since pre-Covid. Dunn spoke to Check Check about launching a mini-festival, recording new music, and rediscovering the joys of playing live.

Check Check: Why did you decide to do a mini-festival over a conventional headline tour?

Erica Dunn: We were just talking about things that would make us feel really good about playing shows and excited to play shows. One of them is when you play lineups like that, it’s a little bit of a travelling circus – albeit the three cities is a real microcosm of that, but there’s something about a group dynamic that makes the show feel less fleeting.

Is it frustrating that your touring options in Australia are quite limited?

Yeah. It is hard out there. MOD CON, we just played with The Breeders a couple of interstate shows and we realised that we hadn’t even been able to afford to go interstate for our last album in 2021. So, it was a bit of an interesting moment to realise, oh yeah, that’s because we can’t afford it.

We would love to visit every single city and do it all, but it’s sort of just being able to maximise on what you can do at the moment. It’s just a bummer because you’d love to go everywhere.

TFS played the Daydream festival dates in April 2023, which was not long after Fiona was diagnosed with cancer, is that right?

Yeah, that’s right. She was just incredible in those shows. She was quite, quite sick and undergoing really intense chemo treatment and we were saying, “Mate, do you want to think about a contingency plan?” And she was like, “If there’s a contingency plan, I won’t do it.”

It was just so cool of her to say, even in the midst of a really shitty time, “This is part of my identity, this is part of who I am or what makes me a person or what makes me feel good even if I’m feeling shit.”

As a friend as a well as a bandmate, or an extension of family, I do not have the words for how breathtakingly strong she’s been through it. We’ve been doing recording at the moment and seeing her ride the demands of two headspaces – of wanting to probably chuck in the towel sometimes but also knowing that she really wants to keep going and wants to tour and wants to make records and stuff – [we’re] seeing her juggle both of those things and ride it out and just do some amazing performances.

How’s the new record coming along?

We’ve had a real good period of writing. It’s one of the things that’s been keeping us sane all through this time; actually having some time to set aside and write and think about what we want to put down, whereas most records in the past have been a real whirlwind between tours.

There’s been a lot of collaboration and a lot of strange things rolling around and also some funny reboots of some things in the past that we gave up on and we’ve then listened to with fresh ears and had another go at.

You’re off to Europe for Primavera in Barcelona and Porto, three shows supporting Bikini Kill, and some other dates in Germany, Italy, France. Are you pretty excited to get back to Europe?

Yeah. I’m kind of joking that I’ve just got my head together at looking at what life is like without touring and begging people for jobs and shit and now I’m like, “Whoops. See ya later!” But we’re absolutely revved.

Talking philosophically about how things have eventuated, I remember thinking after Covid, what a strange sleight of hand to have shows being taken away or opportunities be diminished. It just seemed like a weird dream that we ever did that stuff. Then reconnecting with playing live was just the ultimate serotonin buzz of community and excitement and connection. 

Before Covid, in 2019, I think we’d been on tour for seven months and we were probably ready to just fucking kill each other and praying for nights at home eating pizza in front of the TV. Now it’s suddenly in front of us – playing with Bikini Kill in Europe and going to these places that just seemed so out of reach and potentially could never happen again – I think we’re just going to go at it with so much gusto and do the world a mischief. We’re just so excited.

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