Liars‘ first listen suggests itself to be an entirely disjointed piece, far more so than the highly credited Drum’s Not Dead. Even at its most devastatingly choppy, as with “Leather Prowler,” the album takes a stab at modernizing 1980s alternative (the truest meaning of the term). With that said there is a definite generation gap between the origins of the sounds and the realized tracks on the album. The band is by no means playing role of a fourth generation Butthole Surfers but rather a group of gatherers, searching for a uniquely retrospective balance; and with Liars the group does so, realizing a sound that waves between shocking noise and ballad. The album’s first single, “Plaster Casts of Everything” takes aim closer to the noise side of that spectrum; Angry Ape’s Michael Henaghan mentions of the track, “Liars layer searing solos and droning organ sounds over the beat, while Angus Andrew delivers a vocal style that comes across like an intergalactic Perry Farrell.” If it had been an Earthly version of Perry Farrell based in “reality” rather than another galaxy, and with a vocal balance weighing heavily on “Negative Creep” – I would have agreed wholeheartedly with the man’s definition.

The video for Liars’ “Plaster Casts of Everything” debuted recently to an abundance of online dialogue, Pitchfork’s Mark Richardson offering one of the most complete recollections, “The “madman behind the wheel in a world he doesn’t understand” vibe, in which members of the band take turns driving through a midnight nowhere to escape (or find) some nameless thing, seems a nod to David Lynch’s Lost Highway; the woman trying to flag a ride on a lonely country road evokes the Robert Aldrich noir Kiss Me Deadly; the odd shapeshifting visuals, in which figures like a nude middle-aged woman are superimposed on frontman Angus Andrew as he contorts his mouth in agony, are reminiscent of Chris Cunningham’s work with Aphex Twin; and the beam of light projecting from the skull, well, we’ve seen that even more recently.” The synopsis however is most appropriately (and simply) described by Brooklyn Vegan, “Warning: not actually safe for YouTube (or work?)”

Liars: (Official) (MySpace) (Wikipedia)

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