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11 Kreuncard
14 VVK
16 Doors

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Liars’ debuut ‘They Threw Us All In A Trench …” (2001) deed meteen het nodige stof opwaaien. Het Australische trio bracht vanuit New York zeer energieke punkfunk, toen de hype van de dag. Liars was meteen stevig gebrandmerkt. De band vond het hokje veel te eng en sloeg iedereen met verstomming met opvolger ‘They Were Wrong, So We Drowned’ – een conceptalbum over heksenvervolging waar hun experimenteerdrift wat uit de hand liep. De kritiek was niet mals. Liars gaf er een welgemeende om, verhuisde naar Berlijn en werkte in alle rust aan ‘Drum’s Not Dead’. Het experiment werd er gecombineerd met bezwerende drums, sfeervol (maar ver van braaf) gitaarwerk en hoge, haast transcendentale, stemmen. Een van de beste platen van 2006! Sinds ‘Liars’ uit 2007 staat de band er als een genre op zich en gaan ze verder op de ingeslagen weg. Hun nieuwe cd, ‘Sisterworld’ kent weer meer songs en melodie en staat er weer als een huis. Live straalt Liars zoveel primaire energie uit dat de ervaring haast op een aanranding lijkt. Wellicht een van de beste concerten van 2010! Humo review Eén van de hevigste uppercuts die u zich dit jaar kan laten welgevallen heet 'Scarecrows on a Killer Slant' en staat op 'Sisterworld', de vijfde van Liars: 'Stand them in the street with a gun / And kill them all!' gaat het schuimbekkende refrein. Maar ook zonder die withete woede zou het nummer geen schijn van een kans maken om op de radio gedraaid te worden. Beenharde drums, razende gitaren, oerend hard geschreeuw en een totaal overstuurd geluid: Angus Andrew en z'n makkers weten akelig goed hoe ze een massa-executie moeten opluisteren. 'Sisterworld' is een manifest tegen de escapistische hippie dippie-muziek van menige Amerikaanse groep van nu (hint: ze dragen baarden en staan meestal met veel op het podium) en is geïnspireerd door de zelfkant van Liars-thuishaven Los Angeles - California Nightmaring, met andere woorden. Hoogdravende teksten dus, maar dat staat de toegankelijkheid geenszins in de weg. 'Sisterworld' is gewoon een uitstekend harde gitaarplaat, van opener 'Scissor' (half slaapliedje, half alarmsignaal) over uitschieters als 'Proud Evolution' (een wonderlijk geslaagde hybride van gitaren en beats) en de headbangende psychobilly 'The Overachievers' tot de lugubere afsluiter 'Goodnight Everything' (rammelende kettingen op de achtergrond maken het 'Hellraiser'-sfeertje compleet). 'Sisterworld' is het ideale wapen om vervelend bezoek mee naar buiten te werken. Voor extra moeilijk te verwijderen exemplaren raden wij de special edition aan, waarbij een bonus-cd zit met remixen en herwerkingen van de nummers door gerenommeerde zwartzakken als Melvins, Chris Carter & Cosey Fanni Tutti, Tunde Adebimpe en Alan Vega. 'Oh no no no,' kermt die laatste in de remix van 'No Barrier Fun', een duet met Angus Andrew. Nee, tegen deze Liars is zelfs het hardnekkigste vuil niet opgewassen. Pitchfork review Liars have never been a band comfortable with staying in one place for very long. Geographically, personally and most of all musically, each successive album that they release comes with a new agenda, a new heritage, a new set of reference points and a new way of thinking about music. So, after the multimedia multi-tasking of 2006's ‘Drum's Not Dead' – each track of which came accompanied with three exclusive short films - Liars have returned with their most stripped-back and direct album yet. Simply titled 'Liars', their 4th full-length (recorded in Berlin and LA and mixed in London by Erasure and Depeche Mode producer Gareth Jones) abandons the thirty minute sound collages called things like 'This Dust That Makes The Mud' of old in favour of a set of the band's most conventional and powerful songs yet – although as a band with a reputation forged on thirty minute sound collages called things like ‘This Dust That Makes The Mud’, Liars' recent career swerve is a delightfully surprising as ever. Angus, Aaron Hemphill and Julian Gross - who has played drums with the band since the departure of original rhythm section Pat Nature and Ron Albertson after the band’s first album, 2001's 'They Threw Us All In A Trench And Put A Monument On Top' - decided not to overanalyse the process of making their music. "We aimed to make songs that weren’t going to require a concept. We decided to work really quickly and not talk about what we were doing too much. Aaron and I wanted to write songs that spoke for themselves in a more visceral way – like when you’re a teenager and things really mean a lot for you in a song. We wanted to write songs that reminded us a little of what it was like to be a teenager – so pretty much the only preparation we did was going back and listening to the bands we liked when we were kids, stuff like OMD, The Cure and Siouxsie And The Banshees.” Although Andrew and former microbiologist Aaron Hemphill met in LA (where Andrew studied photography at art school), after a stay in New York the band relocated to Berlin as a base for European touring. Hemphill and Gross returned to LA soon after Drum's Not Dead but Andrew stayed on in the German capital, where the bulk of 'Liars' was recorded at Planet Roc (sic) studios, a former East German radio studio built in the 1950s by Bauhaus architect Franz Ehrlich. After working on their songs separately in Germany and the US, Liars convened at Planet Roc for a fortnight in spanning New Year’s Eve 2006/2007 to stitch together their ideas. The band weren’t balancing their interests alone, however: a friend of Andrew's from Australia, Jeremy Glover, played bass and helped record the album. “Jeremy understood where we were coming from and helped to craft the songs in the studio to help us find that visceral edge we were searching for. We wanted to make a record that would have the same impact on people as hearing, like, the Ramones for the first time did on us.” Their quest to connect on a more visceral level has succeeded. Unlike, say, 2004’s ‘They Were Wrong, So We Drowned', which boasted a fractured narrative based on accounts of the Salem Witch Trials, ‘Liars' is a set of songs only connected by the fact that no other band around could make music like this. This is an album that manages to balance the old, experimentally-minded Liars with an excitingly insidious new pop edge. The experiment has been an unqualified success. By getting back to basics with 'Liars' the band are going back to the future. Whatever or wherever Sisterworld is, it sounds like a pretty creepy place. The fifth Liars album is relentlessly tense-- not so much scary as surreal. Every track is shrouded in echo and anxiety, and often all the tension erupts into bursts of buzzing guitars or pounding beats. Not every dark cloud breaks into a thunderstorm, but it constantly feels like one is lurking around the corner. Despite such potential for surprise, overall Sisterworld isn't actually all that surprising compared to the rest of Liars' discography. For a band known for switching gears from track to track and album to album, this is the most thoroughly Liars-sounding record so far. It has the rhythmic insistence of Drum's Not Dead, the sleepwalking chants of They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, and the straightforward songwriting of Liars, often sounding like a streamlined update on the latter. The narrowed range brings increased depth, and it's intriguing to hear Liars focus on detail and texture rather than stylistic schizophrenia. It turns out refinement suits them as nicely as reinvention. Take "Here Comes All the People", which the band spent a year on, crafting its basic structure in Los Angeles and adding orchestral atmospheres in Prague. None of that guarantees quality-- it's possible to make crap in both L.A. and Prague. But Liars used this elongated process to give zoomed-in attention to each moment. So the trembling guitar line, high-pitched strings, and psychotic piano all fit together, like a puzzle whose picture isn't clear until the last piece is in place. When singer Angus Andrew ends the song by chanting "counting victims one by one," the killer effect comes through lethal injection rather than a loud, blunt act. That mood continues into the meditative "Drip", a track that's almost all atmosphere, with Andrew murmuring, "When will I awake from this dormant sleep?" as if he has no say in the matter. Not everything on Sisterworld is so subdued. "Proud Evolution" grows into a persistent Krautrock-styled groove; the clicking "No Barrier Fun" has the catchy lilt of a nursery rhyme; and "Scarecrows on a Killer Slant" sounds like a warped version of Liars' slamming "Plaster Casts of Everything". Even "Drop Dead", a drunken march that sound ever ready to collapse, holds upbeat energy in its skewed sway. Still, the dominant mode here is creeping tension without tons of cathartic release. That tension is so well-crafted that it consistently engages, but 42 minutes of it might not completely win over every Liars fan, especially those drawn to their more raucous moments. Admittedly, some parts are easier to admire than they are to enjoy. But stick with Sisterworld as it builds, let it seep into your brain while you wait for its bulging seams to burst, and you might find yourself unable to turn your ears away. Eventually, Liars' commitment to their own creepy cause proves contagious.

fr

Dès sa sortie, le premier album des Liars, ‘They Threw Us All In A Trench’ (2001), avait tout de suite fait l’effet d’une bombe. Dès lors, le trio australien, bien qu’installé sur la scène new-yorkaise, voyait son punkfunk très énergique devenir l’une des hype du moment. Directement catégorisé, le groupe trouva cependant la case, dans laquelle on l’avait classé, trop étroite et stupéfia tout le monde avec son successeur ´They Were Wrong, So We Drowned´ - un album concept à considérer comme une chasse aux sorcières sous l’effet de leurs pulsions. Pourtant, la critique ne les épargna pas. Le groupe décida donc de déménager à Berlin pour travailler dans le calme à ‘Drum’s Not Dead’ sur lequel l’expérimental fut combiné à des percussions furieuses, à des guitares aériennes (mais loin d’êtres sages) et à des voix transcendantales. Un des meilleurs albums de 2006 ! Mais étant bien plus qu’un genre en soi, Liars semble vouloir aller encore plus loin comme le prouve leur nouvel album, ‘Sisterworld, qui introduit davantage de chansons et de mélodies. Même si, en concert, Liars déborde d’énergie primaire. Au point que l’expérience puisse s’apparenter à un viol. Peut-être un des meilleurs concerts de 2010 ! Pitchfork review Liars have never been a band comfortable with staying in one place for very long. Geographically, personally and most of all musically, each successive album that they release comes with a new agenda, a new heritage, a new set of reference points and a new way of thinking about music. So, after the multimedia multi-tasking of 2006's ‘Drum's Not Dead' – each track of which came accompanied with three exclusive short films - Liars have returned with their most stripped-back and direct album yet. Simply titled 'Liars', their 4th full-length (recorded in Berlin and LA and mixed in London by Erasure and Depeche Mode producer Gareth Jones) abandons the thirty minute sound collages called things like 'This Dust That Makes The Mud' of old in favour of a set of the band's most conventional and powerful songs yet – although as a band with a reputation forged on thirty minute sound collages called things like ‘This Dust That Makes The Mud’, Liars' recent career swerve is a delightfully surprising as ever. Angus, Aaron Hemphill and Julian Gross - who has played drums with the band since the departure of original rhythm section Pat Nature and Ron Albertson after the band’s first album, 2001's 'They Threw Us All In A Trench And Put A Monument On Top' - decided not to overanalyse the process of making their music. "We aimed to make songs that weren’t going to require a concept. We decided to work really quickly and not talk about what we were doing too much. Aaron and I wanted to write songs that spoke for themselves in a more visceral way – like when you’re a teenager and things really mean a lot for you in a song. We wanted to write songs that reminded us a little of what it was like to be a teenager – so pretty much the only preparation we did was going back and listening to the bands we liked when we were kids, stuff like OMD, The Cure and Siouxsie And The Banshees.” Although Andrew and former microbiologist Aaron Hemphill met in LA (where Andrew studied photography at art school), after a stay in New York the band relocated to Berlin as a base for European touring. Hemphill and Gross returned to LA soon after Drum's Not Dead but Andrew stayed on in the German capital, where the bulk of 'Liars' was recorded at Planet Roc (sic) studios, a former East German radio studio built in the 1950s by Bauhaus architect Franz Ehrlich. After working on their songs separately in Germany and the US, Liars convened at Planet Roc for a fortnight in spanning New Year’s Eve 2006/2007 to stitch together their ideas. The band weren’t balancing their interests alone, however: a friend of Andrew's from Australia, Jeremy Glover, played bass and helped record the album. “Jeremy understood where we were coming from and helped to craft the songs in the studio to help us find that visceral edge we were searching for. We wanted to make a record that would have the same impact on people as hearing, like, the Ramones for the first time did on us.” Their quest to connect on a more visceral level has succeeded. Unlike, say, 2004’s ‘They Were Wrong, So We Drowned', which boasted a fractured narrative based on accounts of the Salem Witch Trials, ‘Liars' is a set of songs only connected by the fact that no other band around could make music like this. This is an album that manages to balance the old, experimentally-minded Liars with an excitingly insidious new pop edge. The experiment has been an unqualified success. By getting back to basics with 'Liars' the band are going back to the future. Whatever or wherever Sisterworld is, it sounds like a pretty creepy place. The fifth Liars album is relentlessly tense-- not so much scary as surreal. Every track is shrouded in echo and anxiety, and often all the tension erupts into bursts of buzzing guitars or pounding beats. Not every dark cloud breaks into a thunderstorm, but it constantly feels like one is lurking around the corner. Despite such potential for surprise, overall Sisterworld isn't actually all that surprising compared to the rest of Liars' discography. For a band known for switching gears from track to track and album to album, this is the most thoroughly Liars-sounding record so far. It has the rhythmic insistence of Drum's Not Dead, the sleepwalking chants of They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, and the straightforward songwriting of Liars, often sounding like a streamlined update on the latter. The narrowed range brings increased depth, and it's intriguing to hear Liars focus on detail and texture rather than stylistic schizophrenia. It turns out refinement suits them as nicely as reinvention. Take "Here Comes All the People", which the band spent a year on, crafting its basic structure in Los Angeles and adding orchestral atmospheres in Prague. None of that guarantees quality-- it's possible to make crap in both L.A. and Prague. But Liars used this elongated process to give zoomed-in attention to each moment. So the trembling guitar line, high-pitched strings, and psychotic piano all fit together, like a puzzle whose picture isn't clear until the last piece is in place. When singer Angus Andrew ends the song by chanting "counting victims one by one," the killer effect comes through lethal injection rather than a loud, blunt act. That mood continues into the meditative "Drip", a track that's almost all atmosphere, with Andrew murmuring, "When will I awake from this dormant sleep?" as if he has no say in the matter. Not everything on Sisterworld is so subdued. "Proud Evolution" grows into a persistent Krautrock-styled groove; the clicking "No Barrier Fun" has the catchy lilt of a nursery rhyme; and "Scarecrows on a Killer Slant" sounds like a warped version of Liars' slamming "Plaster Casts of Everything". Even "Drop Dead", a drunken march that sound ever ready to collapse, holds upbeat energy in its skewed sway. Still, the dominant mode here is creeping tension without tons of cathartic release. That tension is so well-crafted that it consistently engages, but 42 minutes of it might not completely win over every Liars fan, especially those drawn to their more raucous moments. Admittedly, some parts are easier to admire than they are to enjoy. But stick with Sisterworld as it builds, let it seep into your brain while you wait for its bulging seams to burst, and you might find yourself unable to turn your ears away. Eventually, Liars' commitment to their own creepy cause proves contagious.