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Interview
by SashaS
3-8-2002
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| Liars who don't... |
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Banks of imagery
Liars are like musical ‘Reservoir Dogs’ who do get away
Here is a list: Public Image Ltd, Gang Of Four, Sonic Youth, Wire, King Crimson, The Residents, The Fall, Butthole Surfers… These are only some of the bands one can name as echoing through the grooves of the Liars’ debut album ‘They Threw Us All In Trench And Stuck A Monument On Top’, but the scope of the band’s influences is far and wide to evoke completely different reference points in someone else. (Still with us? You right-on soul!)
New York’s Liars’ debut album is released (in UK) only in mid-August after doing its (partial) tour of duty in the States since October 2001; it’s been unavailable for a few months after its initial pressing sold out. The quartet’s songs – all of the psycho-punk entitling norm – take you tripping to the outer limits of imagination or make you feel like a monolith in ‘2001: Space Odyssey’: all-observing, all-receiving, all-processing sonic-data. This complex and spaced-out (somewhat stoner/somewhat composite) soundarama will overload your senses…
Tall vocalist Angus Andrew, guitarist Aaron Hempill (official biog has him as Hemphill – which we thought hilarious!), providers of beats Pat Nature (bass) and Ron Albertson (drums), are all around a corner table in a London hotel bar, talking like they play music – deconstructively or, probably, reconstructing with substitute panache. The strangest thing about their album is that all its nine tracks were recorded over two days in Brooklyn, NYC.
“That’s as much as we had a budget for,” Angus Andrews opens this verbal parade, “a meagre budget, $1,000. The secret of the album, if there is one, is that we made it without expecting people to like it and weren’t really concerned with it and, I think, that’s what helped us. We liked it but not having any hang-ups about how you come off or how people perceive you, it wasn’t important to us. We were honest in the way we put this stuff together.”
“Just making music we wanted to hear,” guitarist Hempill adds, “but couldn’t find.”
A love-loss is an instantaneous anguish, a culture-void is realised only when re-filled.
Unperformed suburbia
Brooklyn-based quartet consists of a singer from Melbourne, guitarist from Los Angeles and rhythm section from Nebraska. “Andrew and I met in Los Angeles,” Angus clarifies, “Pat and Ron knew each other from Nebraska, and we all moved, both couples, to New York around the same time; all live in Brooklyn and still live as couples.”
“In pairs,” Hempill corrects to dispel any possibility of sexual innuendo.
This cultural diversity obviously contributes to the sonic expanse.
“Perhaps, but what is the most important,” Andrew points out, “is that we found common ground that even if we don’t like something we find something to like. We’ve all concluded that there is something to be gained from everything that is made. Even if it is terrible, we’ll take it.”
“You can always find something that interests you,” drummer Albertson joins the conversation, “whether it is in a Neil Young song or a Gang Of Four’s. We are just glad to be alive and doing something we love.”
“Only fools listen to one kind of music,” bassist Nature comments, “because that is dishonest to yourself and to your listeners.”
Force of future
Eastern seaboard of America appears to be the centre of a trendsetting scene again, with bands like The White Stripes, The Strokes and Liars, alongside the stalwarts like Sonic Youth and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, challenging the brainless-intensity of nu-metal and its relative, noise-for-sentiments rap-metal or faux emo-rocking with vibrant, engaging and rebellious sounds of the verge of counter-culture.
“What we have in common with some of the bands we are compared to,” Andrew continues in his double (Oz-plus-Calif.) laidback manner “is not that we emulate them but draw from the same inspirational sources. It is similarly wide spread as those bands’… I’ve been listening to a lot of dance music, Aaron used to play in hardcore bands, Pat and Ron did they alternative/punky playing… Now, there is no better compliment when we have constantly varied and weird comparisons.”
Although named Liars, this line-up uses ‘honesty’ very often in their answers but to impress it upon public massively pre-trained to ‘hype’…
“We go against it and don’t bulls**t,” Andrew stresses, “like all the bands in the world claiming to be the best in the world. This is not a competition and all we are trying to do is make music, be creative,
do it our own way… We haven’t made song-titles for people to remember them, or hit singles… There is nothing easy to swallow…”
Liars are the oddest hard-rockin’-punk-dance band you’ll encounter in eons to come, guarantees my psychic.
(26 June 2002)
SashaS
25-6-2002
Liars’ album ‘They Threw Us All In Trench And Stuck A Monument On Top’ is released 19 August on Blast First
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