Liars' self-titled fourth LP looks at noise, punk, dance and pop through the long lens of last year's very awesome Drum's Not Dead. Rather than returning to their Brooklyn punk roots they're digging them up and transplanting them on the other side of the jagged fence built by Drowned.
This is their most varied and accessible album yet, starting off with the numbing riff/bash stadium noise rocker "Plaster Casts of Everything" - a song within a song, really - followed by "Houseclouds" which is a dead ringer for what Beck should have been doing instead of The Information. Most songs track pretty close to Drum's reductive atmosphere and night stalker tension, however the added buzz of guitar, saturated feedback loops, and rhythms aimed at listeners' asses rather than bowels makes the Liars sound more like an adventurous rock band than a talented trio of noisy artists. Add "accessible" to the oft used "experimental" tag they bear. Keep the "awesome" too.
This is their most varied and accessible album yet, starting off with the numbing riff/bash stadium noise rocker "Plaster Casts of Everything" - a song within a song, really - followed by "Houseclouds" which is a dead ringer for what Beck should have been doing instead of The Information. Most songs track pretty close to Drum's reductive atmosphere and night stalker tension, however the added buzz of guitar, saturated feedback loops, and rhythms aimed at listeners' asses rather than bowels makes the Liars sound more like an adventurous rock band than a talented trio of noisy artists. Add "accessible" to the oft used "experimental" tag they bear. Keep the "awesome" too.
