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April 1st, 2006 by Eric K (Permalink)
Label: Mute Year: 2006 Add Comments |
Last year Kaizer Chief Ricky Wilson claimed he’d suck off a tramp for success - which, oddly enough, is the sound I hear when listening to his records. Point is, for most bands Rock is just a good way of making a few bucks (they did call their album ‘Employment’ after all). You could go and work for the Halifax but it’s a lot more fun snorting coke of models backstage at the NME awards. But enough about my weekend, it’s refreshing to come across a band so apparently committed to alienating whatever audience they might have amassed at every turn thereby sacrificing any chance of commerical success. “Was I naive to think they’d stay?” asks ‘Mt Heart Attack’ with a heavy dose of cynicism. New York’s Liars are, in other words, a PR nightmare: about as predictable as Mexican jumping beans but equally colourful and mesmerising.
The band decamped to the former East Germany to record these propulsive, tribal mantras and the stunning acoustics afforded by their labyrinthian studio has proven worth the move. Echoing the pioneering work of This Heat but equally the fascinating neo-psychedelica movement currently emanating from Scandanavia their third record encompasses a brutal, unforgiving cacophony. Polarising critical opinion like a marmite buffet at the Kyoto summit, Liars third LP will do little to heal this rift but ‘Drum…’ is a revelatory kick to the teeth of those pundits who lambasted their refusal to cow-tow to the great industry tenet of ’sounding like your last record’. Cyclical, raga-esque vocals and gentle acoustics intersperse more forceful, percussive tracks forging a compelling, if slightly disturbing new path through the swampy mire. Like watching a David Lynch movie, it makes you feel a bit uneasy yet you can’t help but look. For all its pretentiousness, this is music that grabs you by the cerebral cortex and kicks you deep in the gut. It’s raw, emotive and genuinely affecting. Amid tense, crawling scree and wailing, eerie falsetto, ‘Drum…’ makes for an overwhelming crucible at first, but those who choose to invest a bit of time in Liars will be counting the epiphanies till doomsday.
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April 6th, 2006 at 12:03 pm
Having seen Liars about two years before this album dropped, I was surprised when everyone started going on about how this album was so fantastic.
When I saw them, they were nothing but a dance punk band.
The music lived up to the hype, however, and there’s nary a word in the above recommendation which I disagree with.