Album Review: Liars, "Liars"

The Liars’ previous three albums managed the impossible feat of sounding nothing like each other, yet totally like Liars albums. From the rebellious, energetic, manifesto-like They Threw Us All In a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top, to They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, the creepy, dissonant concept album about witches in Germany in the 16th century, to last year’s moody, atmospheric, frightening album on creative production and writer’s block, Drum’s Not Dead, they have had a vision unlike anybody else out there in the music world. Given the variation from album to album, with each becoming seemingly more abstract and exploratory (the best way to describe Drum’s Not Dead’s sound is terrifying, ambient guitars, driven by tribal-like drumming), fourth album would lead.

Turns out, it led into one of their most straightforward and melodic albums, and not just from the one-word eponymous title (a vast change from the 13-word debut). Right away, as “Plaster Casts of Everything” comes blaring in, it is immediately clear that this is going to be some of the most straightforward rock Liars have produced thus far. The guitars are at their least-distorted (yet still distorted, sometimes reminiscent of mid-80s Sonic Youth but still sounding totally like the Liars’s own sound, and not a ripoff of somebody else’s sound), and the songs are more compact and drive harder than anything since They Threw Us All in a Trench…. “Cycle Time” offers a first, as the song has a soaring three-chord pulse driving it throughout, providing the most traditionally loud and rocking thing Liars have ever produced. “Freak Out” is as short as most of the songs on They Threw Us All in a Trench and shorter than anything on They Were Wrong… or Drum’s Not Dead, but instead of going through three different tempos and pieces of song in its two and a half minutes, it stays with the same melody and verse-chorus structure throughout.

However, this shouldn’t be understood as Liars doing their best impression of somebody else. The guitars are still distorted, creepy, at times nighmarish. Andrew Angus’s voice still jumps from a quiet whisper to an angry tenor to a high, mournful falsetto from song to song (and sometimes within the same song), and they are still playing with styles ranging from funk to progressive to punk (also sometimes within the same song), all the while making the sound all their own. Additionally, the clanging, dissonant guitars, muffled beats, and strange atmospherics have not disappeared from this album. “Leather Prowler,” still has the tribal drumming and ambient guitar sound, yet it’s more rocking than anything on Drum’s Not Dead. “The Dumb in the Rain” has its drums buried so deeply that what you really hear driving the song is one of the guitars repeatedly hitting the same, chiming, clanging chord, and the closer, “Protection,” uses keyboards to drive it and set up the song’s atmospherics. But the use of items like typewriters to form the basis of the music is gone – this is guitars and drums, and occasional keyboards.

And it’s simply great. Every one of their albums is excellent, but this may be their best work yet. Anyone who has continued to ignore them would be smart to start checking them out, because Liars may be one of the most daring, most interesting, and best bands out there now.

6/6 square glasses