:: Track Listing

1. Plaster Casts of
Everything [Stream]
2. Houseclouds [Stream]
3. Leather Prowler
4. Sailing to Byzantium [Stream]
5. What Would They Know
6. Cycle Time
7. Freak Out [Stream]
8. Pure Unevil
9. Clear Island
10. The Dumb in the Rain
11. Protection

:: Record Review

Liars

Liars
(Mute; 2007)

Rating: 63%
Combined Rating: 64%


Liars is kind of good, I guess; it's as if by now -- with the eponymous LP being their fourth and with the surrounding clatter detailing an evolutionary step some peg as a "return," others as a "consolidation," and me as "fish stew" -- they've used any means to death, so much so that the monotony of their prolificacy only tacks the band to a kind of upward-arcing, pee-green flowchart. Which isn't to say that relentlessly experimental bands (lest they consistently confound) should be occluded from criticism, or flowcharts, or required production budget, or from pictures of cavemen waking up to find a less prominent brow and the fact that pterodactyl eggs don't satisfy like they used to, or from Dave Sitek. But it is to say that Liars is not a relentlessly experimental band, just a predictably abrasive one.

So maybe Liars suffers by being a short-but-still-too-goddamn-long account of Angus Andrew, Aaron Hemphill, and Julian Gross plodding blankly back through the Liars canon after a mere seven years of three albums and a handful of EPs (countless times I've heard "handful" used cheerily in respect to their fourth disc; the connotation should be negative: "handful" should be damning, a clear admission of the songs lacking any real focus, something like, "I have a handful of STDs"). Two members put to sleep, these Liars by now have that Liars blueprint down. Unfortunately, Liars is all about that Liars blueprint, and in that sense the album can get redundant.

While each track explores every possible paradigm of a formula the band's cored through and through, each also operates on the assumption that genre is only a matter of variety. The carnal drone pastiche that makes "Leather Prowler" ache, that's the belabored attempt of We Were Wrong So We Drowned (2004) impaled with piano, soothed by "Sailing to Byzantium" and the delayed trip-hop balm that follows. And "Byzantium" rings hollow, as did Drum's Not Dead (2006), acting as a difference striking enough from its preceding songs to white over the whole idea that Liars are just doing what Liars have always done, which is to set down one simple notion of pop structure (primal beat, grinding noise loop, a twisted pumpkin pulp guitar tone beat over two poorly tuned strings because those are what're available), harmonize wailing with falsetto chanting over top, and fill in the tracks with the garbage left over from all the pasteurized synth. Or, to keep simplifying: for each song, the band strikes on an idea immediately, something mysterious or something that even seems protean, and then piledrives that into the ground. So, even though "Pure Unevil" owes more to the subterranean desperation of any watershed point in Krautrock's late '60s/early '70s reign than the psych-depressed downstrokes of "The Dumb in the Rain," the two songs essentially work the same. A powerfully affected, powerfully simple drum beat clangs against dirty, staccato electric guitar, vocals struggle for the top of whatever storm's brewing, and the whole piece sounds instantly spooky, forgettably frightening.

Of course, Liars isn't a dud, and tracks like the two opening "Plaster Casts of Everything" and "Houseclouds" last on the easy vitality of their first bars, the former that of the common time whiplash post-punk the band built their legacy on and the latter that of some casio throwback dance-hump that Drum's Not Dead tip-toed around. And "Clear Island" is plain damn refreshing, dervish-ing on a dime from squall to what amounts to, um, white rap irony (?) and two-stepping back. It's the first time (when the band kinda harmonizes, which means they really only pile on vocal tracks to obscure how off-key they can get) that they openly ignore their syllabus, when the genres they emulate and contort aren't defined by logy conceits about repetition or challenging ambience but just brought together in pure sonic excitement. And there they succeed, paring all their "growth" as a band down to a visceral essence, obviously geeked about all the racket, noise, and melody they're blasting. Which makes for the first time Liars is actually any fun.

As soon as Liars get over what it means to be Liars from album to album, and as soon as they inculcate the experimentation of all their influences as a playful celebration of balking at tradition instead of an infuriating, stagnating wall of sound, then maybe their records won't seem so dreary. I mean, I'm all for them continuing in the fuck-you vein of doing what they want and when, but shit, I would have imagined they'd have gotten what they want by now. Dom Sinacola :: 8 September 2007 |