The only time the Liars played Las Vegas, in October 2002, gangly frontman Angus Andrew leapt off the House of Blues’ elevated stage. Doesn’t sound particularly daring? Consider that the floor below sat virtually empty as the band performed its opening set for headliner Jon Spencer, leaving Andrew to splatter uncushioned onto the unforgiving cement.
The moment, underobserved as it might have been, has proven to be emblematic of the Liars’ entire existence. Scrap a finished record. Sack the rhythm section. Relocate from Brooklyn to Berlin. Craft a concept album about Germanic witch trials. Release a 17-minute noise-crusted cover of Led Zeppelin’s “How Many More Times.” More than any musical precept, a reckless spirit guides the trio’s actions, a fact only confirmed by its eponymously titled fourth full-length.
Gone are the thematically linked, spookily-crafted-in-the-dead-of-night compositions of They Were Wrong So We Drowned and Drum’s Not Dead, banished to the scrap heap with the noise-punk of debut They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top. As Liars’ scattershot first three tunes foretell, the new approach could be the most audacious yet—an anything-goes sound safari that zigzags across eight lanes of traffic, both shoulders and the median without bothering to return to its point of origin.
“Plaster Casts of Everything” is a clamorously rocking sledgehammer of an opener. Next cut “Houseclouds” electro-sways sweetly, sounding something like Porno For Pyros. And with its backdrop of off-tuned clanging, third track “Leather Prowler” feels rather like an outtake from Sonic Youth’s Bad Moon Rising. From there? Well, if Andrew can dream it, the Liars will try it, from MBV-esque shoegazing to Black Sabbathian proto-metal to Jesus and Mary Chain-y dream-pop.
Whether all that head-spinning makes for as satisfying a listen as the band’s bizarre-but-cohesive previous two efforts is a matter of individual taste—the early verdict here is that it does not—but there’s no debating this: You don’t need to see Andrew take a header to know he’s nuts. Or a genius. Or both.
Liars
Liars
*** 1/2