In our utopian 2012 mainstream, Thom Yorke, creator of super hits for Rihanna, blasts from smartphones, TV On The Radio songs take their rightful place on daytime TV (and radio, obvz), Peaking Lights are regarded as classic pop and Ministry Of Sound’s Saturday night crowd lose their shit to ‘Brats’ by Liars. Our blissful daydream is inspired by the fact that Angus Andrew, Aaron Hemphill and Julian Gross are the latest bunch of avant garde loving noiseniks to try their hand at dance tracks; as ‘WIXIW’ finds the LA-based trio embracing laptop music-making for the fi rst time. The few minutes it takes for you to get your head around this and to work out what a wixxy-wuh, wizzy, weez (it’s actually “wish you”) is could be much better spent downloading the album and soaking up their thrilling take on a genre of music that is currently (in our distinctly un-utopian, Jessie J-littered reality) associated with douchebags. Where ‘Sisterworld’, regarded by many as Liars’ masterpiece, was a mesmerising response to “the horror of everyday life”, this sixth full-length is much more inward-looking. It finds the outside world so distasteful that the band bury into themselves and deep into their psyches, exploring their relationships and alternative dimensions as coping mechanisms. The results are dizzying, discordant and heavily rhythmic, as Andrew, Hemphill and Gross weave found sounds, freaky fragments of melancholy off-kilter melody, spiralling keyboard motifs, flurries of strings and distorted vocals and riffs through electronics that crunch and crack like shattered glass. And this dark, sonic fairyland is made even more intense by Liars’ most cryptic, yet personal, lyrics to date. “I’ll always be your friend, I’ll never let you down,” croaks frontman Angus over beautifully subdued opener ‘The Exact Colour Of Doubt’. ‘A Ring On Every Finger’’s intoxicating beats drive the story of a break up you just can’t get over – “you’re no better than you were when your heart fell apart and it’s broken, still broken” – while the distinctly dub-y ‘Flood To Flood’ is just plain surreal with its synths that squeal like hysterical mice, skittering drums and requests to “tie me up in a red ribbon” and “bring me breakfast after dinner”. Our wish was for fucked up club music; Liars just made it come true.
Camilla Pia
