They Were Wrong, So We Drowned

by

Liars

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This latest Liars full-length was given a one-star review by a long running, well respected music magazine. Now I gotta say, I'm really into the album, I love the sinister overtones, and i think the discordant, bizarre but fiendishly catchy single 'There's Always Room on the Broom' is a stroke of genius. But then i can understand why people wouldn't like it. It's might difficult and it's a might spooked. But, you know, i thought that being such 'long running, well respected music magazine' they might chisel some classic well honed criticism. Ah alas no... They've just parroted that sneaky pre-release rumour that the album was unlistenable. They describe the album as an 'electronic noise collage'. No it isn't! That's the kind of high and narrow-minded opinion that my mum might expound from the top of the stairs. Have you heard early royal trux? Have you listened to the Liars? And they dismiss it as being 'rooted in the what-the-f**k? tradition of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music' do they? If anything it's a "f**k you!" to those tired old institutions who sneer when a band is prepared to scissor their reputation by pursuing their muse into choppy waters. So sail on brave liars, if only there were more bands with your unbridled artistic ambition...

For those who have characterized Liars' sophomore effort as "harsh unlistenable noise," we must have a pretty different idea of what harsh unlistenable noise is.

I actually found this kind of mellow, in a strange sort of way. But then again I've played host to a couple (area code)-based Noise Fests, where the music sounds a lot like being run over by a tank for twelve straight hours. They Were Wrong has buried pop elements that aren't really that far off from Liquid Liquid or even The Pop Group, they're just utilizing a rougher (and yes, somewhat less focused) sonic palette.

I always thought my like for the Liars started and ended with their first album (despite that trying, half-hour long loop on the last track), mainly for its ever-so-slight resemblance to the Jesus Lizard. But after revisiting this CD recently while driving around in my car, I gotta say this is hands down their most interesting effort.

After They Were Wrong there were line-up changes, a move to Brooklyn and a downhill slide into mediocrity (I found Drum's Not Dead and subsequent releases to be pretty dull -- and pretty dulling as far as making me want to run far, far away from the newer "experimental" dance-rock acts i.e Measles Mumps Rubella et al). Gahh, that dance-rock term makes me shudder -- but don't worry, crazy giant glasses guy, dance-rock/punk pops back up every 5 years or so as the fickle tastes of the terminally hip rediscover/scorn/rediscover/scorn world-funk rhythms in an endless shallow cycle. So keep your ironic Rainbow Brite T-shirt, you may need it again some day.

I appreciate what Liars are trying to do here, I even applaud it; but too many people parrot other reviews: the erroneous "harsh noise" tag and the conceit that this is a "concept" album. Sorry, concept? Too abstract. A booklet of opaque drawings and thematic song titles do not a concept album make! Sergeant Pepper this ain't. Sure, it's all loosely orbiting the theme of witch trials and Walpurgisnacht, but it's not a conceptual narrative so much as it is a thematic arc. Not even in the time-shifted Tarantino sense.

It's a theme album. Sorry to split hairs but so many people repeat those same two things about They Were Wrong and it suggests a profound lack of grasp on what's really here musically, which is krautrock-y soundscapes, a rough-and-tumble anti-aesthetic and a thematic exploration of the persecution of witches through time -- often in a deliberately obtuse way. That's not a bad thing, there's a legacy of assaultive, obtuse records that this aspires to join. But those aspects are really window-dressing: who cares what it's about if it is in fact truly unlistenable? Which it isn't. I find it to be neither unlistenable nor particularly experimental, unless you count experimenting with peoples' sensibilities who haven't been exposed to much other "harsh unlistenable" sounds. Yes, your conservative realtor aunt is going to hate this, but your college professor grandfather just might be down with it.

I plan to spend a lot more quality time with this record, now that we've gotten reacquainted long after the hype has diminished and folks have moved on to other, just as obtuse bands with longer beards.