Tropical Trash - UFO Rot LP (Load, 2015)
"What fuels Tropical Trash, ultimately, is a raw, generous anxiety—borne of youth, borne of aimlessness, borne of limitlessness—so communicable that it’s nearly anthemic. If that seems slight, it’s certainly worth remembering that cults have been built on much less." - Raymond Cummings (Pitchfork)
"Lo! This is the greatest American rock record on Load since Thee Hydrogen Terrors full-length that came 16 years prior. But where that band put forth an image of harried professionalism coming loose at the edges, before giving into a real truth teller like “I Got a Plate in My Head,” Tropical Trash comes off as the tinfoil hat eggshells you’d expect, unhireable and not really on the market anyhow. I saw a picture of their drummer where he had those pretzels shaped like grids stuck against his eye sockets like monocles, so you tell me. A booklet included with the record speaks of “Jazz Fry,” an internal concept buried in an impenetrable spray of words and mishandled images, folding over on itself with no real point of entry or exit. Once inside, treat yourself to psychic beatings from these three guys, who use skate video thrash as a jumping off point for mind pollution to grind machinery into piles of filings and loosen fillings so the transmissions will quiet down. You get four short thrusts at the outset, followed by three songs that sound like a suite of the last three, and two long ones on the second side (one of the few times drummer Jeff Komara gets a break from the restless pummel and plays with mutable tempos as the rest of these guys do airplane noises and jazz refrains above him) which make the record something like a reverse funnel that corkscrews you into the top at high speed, gets you comfortable with the velocity, then drops out the walls as you fall into the torments they have in store for you at the end – straight up MENACING lock-ins during closer “Pink Sweat” that’ll have you fucking up at work, too.
A couple more spins should really pin down what a brain burner this one is, but on listen three I am deeply satisfied by the trajectory and dimension of how these guys handle noise rock. It’s all that’s needed right now. Let someone else touch your heart; Tropical Trash is prepared to go all the way into your ear, way further than safety would suggest." - Doug Mosurock (Still Single)