They may have cancelled their recently scheduled Irish show (in Dublin with Battles), to go of and support some band called Radiohead (?) in the States, but Los Angeles' Liars haven't forgotten about us. With their North American arena tour now completed, the three piece are making their way back over to these shores for a full Irish tour which includes a FREE gig in Cork at the Crane Lane, thus proving good things do come to those who wait.

Four albums into an eight year career and still as confounding as ever, Liars represent a kind of pure and selfish artistic pursuit, one that is too preoccupied with probing the darkest and, sometimes dankest, corners of their own musical curiosities to give a damn what you or anyone else thinks. Having relocated to New York early on, the then four-piece found themselves cast in the mould of post-punk revivalists alongside fellow NYC groups The Rapture and Interpol.

Liars had other thoughts however and almost immediately set about altering the perceptions that had built up around them in a relatively short space of time. Subsequent releases, beginning with their striking sophomore LP, 2004s They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, were marked departures from their hostile but danceable debut. Whereas They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument On bristled with trashy Gang of Four inclined post-punk and the inevitable incursion into furiously ragged funk territories, its follow up wallowed and howled in textural and structural ambivalence, its loosely conceptual theme of witch hunts and trials somewhat mirroring the response the album and band received in the immediate wake of its release.

But with the necessary curveball thrown, Liars were now free to roam and experiment in whatever way they saw fit – Drum's Not Dead, their third album, saw the band relocate to Berlin where the post-war landscape and cities turbulent history and musical heritage seeped into the groups sound.

Sonically arresting on every level, the record was a vague retracing of old ground, with the material once again approaching the more traditional structures heard on their debut album, coupled with the experimental no-wave ambience of its follow-up. If Post-Krautrock didn't exist before, it does now. Their latest record, the self-titled Liars, has seen the band return to the clatter of their primitive garage-rock sound, but their idiosyncratic, experimental and cerebral tendencies still remain. Propulsive, ethereal, mystical, haunting and above all else hypnotizing, Liars make no concessions and offer no apologies. We need more bands like them. They play the Crane Lane on Sunday, June 22.

Comments (0) »

Show/Hide comment form

Name

Email

Title

Comment

Write the displayed characters

Add Comment