Liars
NPR First Listen here!
Stereogum preview here!
Pitchfork announcement here!
Liars have been feeding off fear for their entire career. Sometimes, they intentionally trap themselves within it, like on their last record, 2012's WIXIW, where internal anxieties were laboured over and rendered into a beautifully crafted synthetic inertia that coursed through an almost biological soundscape. But other times, the band uses fear to fuel their wild dance. Where WIXIW was the sound of a band in an ambiguous, fragile in-between state, Mess is Liars with their balls out – an angry, ecstatic, primal burst of ritualistic synth-rock that sacrifices self persecution for potent, purposeful abandon.
On the band's seventh record, the introspective, self-analytical tone of the last effort is swapped for one of wanton immediacy: a feeling of brattish certainty that hasn't been heard on a Liars record since the band's 2001 debut, They Threw Us All In A Trench And Stuck A Monument On Top. “We are a reactionary, or maybe a better word is schizophrenic band,” says statuesque frontman Angus Andrew. “We go from one extreme to the other. Working on the last record was really doubtful and paranoid, and that's fine, but it just meant that when work started on this one, it was the exact opposite. It was way more instinctual, fun and confident. We recorded our first record in two days, and the idea of anyone listening to it wasn't an issue. It's nice to return to that idea of making music.”
Liars' career has seen the band rattle through pigeonholes in an attempt to avoid them all together: brittle yet taught punk funk; liminal no-wave; ecstatic noise-pop; 21st-century garage rock; post-millennial post-rock; delicate electronics; reaching here, where Angus Andrew, Aaron Hemphill and Julian Gross now find themselves – maybe not quite at ease with the world, but staring it straight in the eye while showing their teeth.
RIYL: Radiohead, Oneida, Xiu Xiu, Octopus Project, Crystal Castles
TRY: #1, 4, 6
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