Genre: Rock Year: 2004 Country: USA Official Site: Liars Details: Tracks & Audio Label: Mute Records
In the past few months, I've seen a number of albums like this come through my hands. I always wonder: What's the genre? Musicians who disregard pop music and find their muse in a good drumstick-tapping or some choice notes on a deliberately out-of-tune guitar? It's the sort of music that strikes me as pressureless afternoon recording in a living room, not crushingly orchestrated sessions in a studio with a producer. I mean, with music like this, what do you add and what do you take away? There's too much experimentalism in it, too much love for beats and notes that don't gel with the average ear.
This will never be played on the radio.
If the husband-and-wife creative core of Sonic Youth wrote "Bull in the Heather" (you know, that one Sonic Youth song with the main between-verse riff played on the guitar strings above the fretboard, giving it that tinkly, out-of-tune sound) into an album, it might be this. Sonic Youth-esque guitar noise joined with mostly monotone male chanting populates most of the songs. Sometimes there's some melodic falsetto backing vocals, and always an emphasis on drum beats, drumstick tapping and hand drums.
There's nothing here for the car-radio dial, but there is some good music for industrial fans and those who need a break from standard verse-chorus-verse. Some of the songs are atmospheric and full of noises, like "flow my tears the spider said"; others are vaguely dance-y, like "they don't want your corn they want your kids." Nice touches include a song built out of a largely out-of-tune riff — "hold hands and it will happen anyway" — and the Frank Black-esque "Where Is My Mind?" falsetto backing vocal on "theres always room on the broom."
Liars They Were Wrong, So We Drowned
