Liars create a ‘maximasing’ album

In the Darkness-isation of galactic flavour, the crazy world where the most pathetic, ersatz and, surely, the worst band in the world gets feted as the best, plenty doesn’t tally. ‘Pop Idol’, Stereophonics, The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand; with ‘prog-rock’ on an apparent revival path, we are heading into reinventing the past… Away from the innovative, unusual, weird and avant-piercing.

Searching for any truth through arts has become a disused exercise because it is a futile enterprise to look deep only to find the sunset of humanity’s sound soul… The taste-free comedy continues and we keep glorifying people who have only had time to crave fame but not develop creativity, cultivate talent… Bandwagons line up along the platforms at the Web-bam-thank-U-folks…

But then, the TGV-like train named Liars arrived from an enchanting distance with ‘They Threw Us All In A Trench And Stuck A Monument On Top’. A couple of years down the aurally degrading [alike the British railnetwork’s] line, and with the reduced personnel [the rhythm section decamped for other pastures], Liars refresh the fear with ‘They Were Wrong, So We Drowned’.

The album’s central theme is witchcraft but one has to be aware of the fact that nothing should ever be taken literally with Angus Andrew, the band’s lyricist and vocalist. Well, this may be songs of actual witchhunt in some bygone century but it mirrors contemporary ‘executions’: people may have a choice of joining or not but scores usually queue up to be TV-vilified: accused, sentenced and ‘burned’ in the public court of mass media.

Mr Andrew claims that “We laid down the basic tracks for the first track, and Aaron [Hemphill, guitarist/co-songwriter] was, for no apparent reason, adamant it should be called ‘Broken Witch’. I was messing around on the Internet later, and typed ‘Broken Witch' into Google, only I mistyped it as ‘Brocken Witch’. Next thing I knew, all these web pages about Walpurgisnacht* and the legend of Brocken mountain started popping up, so I started reading through them. I walked into the room where the other guys were, kind of blown away that we’d stumbled upon it; it was just perfect.”

As the album title suggests this is a story of one of a series of campaigns against womankind conducted through the ages, it is about mythology, scare-mongering and a struggle between the ‘possessed women’ and village of scared Christians. Now, replace folklore with spin-doctoring and Brocken with Bush-land… In our reality where truth, trust and vision are pushed aside by all the sexy display of flesh that effectively manipulate us into the dormant, android-state of existence… Liars take you to the cerebral limits.

Intel, honesty, irony and, occasional sarky-remarky, are the only tools to feel real, not reel. While the rest of the muso-brethren and sistahoods are busy exploring the same malfunctions, sonic mafia appears to have emigrated to… New Jersey. [Liars relocated from the suburban urbanity of Brooklyn to the ‘wilderness’ of Hickory Lane in the ‘Garden State’, where he’s homed in with girlf Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs.] From the basement of Andrew’s house have emerged synthesis of dark electronics, primal noise and rickety analogue SFX that some have already sided along the Sonic Youth’s seminal disc ‘Bad Moon Rising’. With additional chaotic nodding in the direction of Suicide, Can and, even, Throbbing Gristle.

And, rightly so, my Warlock, Sire! Liars’ LP is a ‘Maximasing’ product. [A new theory is going to be presented by Professor Barry Schwartz in London next week that re-writes the rulebook of ‘hunters and collectors’ groupings: we are apparently either ‘maximasers’ - who shop until they drop the bestest choice that leaves them dissatisfied and ‘satisfiers’ - we prefer term ‘optimisers’ for the rest of humanity - who don’t want to waste time on consumerism and are cool with a choice that would “serve the purpose” and then go home happy.]

They were wrong and drowned in mediocrity, the dogmatic pop-persons. Hail Liars!

9/10

(UK) Tour dates:

04 May - Thekla, Bristol
05 May - Roadhouse, Manchester
06 May - Uni, Sheffield
07 May - Cockpit, leeds
08 May - Rescue Rooms, Nottingham
10 May - Meanfiddler, London
11 May - Zodiac, Oxford

Triptych Festival, Scotland:

28 April - The Venue, Edinburgh
29 April - The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen
30 April - The Tramway, Glasgow
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* Walpurgisnacht is celebrated in Germany on 30 April and, according to German legend, is the night when the witches fly on their broomsticks to the Brocken, Germany’s highest mountain, deep in the Hartz range, a location rich in folklore. The date is a potent one, declared the Witches Sabbath by the inquisition at the height of the witch-hunt hysteria of the middle ages, and was originally the date of a Heathen Festival, the night deities Wodan and Freya conceived Spring. The legends surrounding the witches of Brocken have inspired many works of art and music, such as Mussorgsky’s ‘Night On Bald Mountain’, and, also, John Carpenter’s ‘Wrecked Bitches’. (Erm, remember the name of the band - Cryptic Ed.]