Mute
2007
Liars
About This Album
After making densely packed, high-concept albums like They Were Wrong, So We Drowned and Drum's Not Dead, the most experimental thing Liars could do was make their version of a pop album. Liars strips away most of the concepts and some of the ornate sonics of the band's previous two albums, leaving a simpler, smaller-scale album with as much impact as their more ambitious work. Each song here is focused -- only a handful stretch past four minutes long -- but Liars wanders wherever it wants to, touching on noise, prog, hard rock, punk, industrial, and other styles the band has flirted with in the past, as well as a few uncharted ones. The album begins with "Plaster Casts of Everything," a flame-throwing rock behemoth that sounds even heavier compared to the largely atmospheric sound of Drum's Not Dead. While it's just as furious as anything from They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top, it isn't a return to how they did rock before. Likewise, "Cycle Time"'s art-damaged biker metal and "Clear Island"'s snotty, dystopian electro garage rock are unmistakably Liars -- loud, weird, oddly tribal -- but don't sound rehashed.
Track List (try tracks 1,5,7,9 and 10)

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