12:01 AM - Liars - Liars

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My introduction to Liars had nothing to do with the fact that I lived in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in 2002 (that feels like lifetimes ago, by the way). While in Atlanta on a road trip, I read a review of They Threw Us All In A Trench And Stuck A Monument On Top that made me stop by the next record shop I found to buy it. Having been bit of a rock purist (and not exactly into any sort of dance music) the spazzy shake of those songs was something brand new to me. Even all these years later, I still get a rush any time a track like "Mr Your On Fire Mr" comes on that hardly any other band can cause.

Through the splits and singles I paid attention and enjoyed what I heard, but it was all just a little like that record without breaking any more ground, so I kept going back to the perfectly long-titles album. By the time They Were Wrong, So We Drowned came around it was no secret that the band had been getting more and more experimental and changed the lineup significantly. Appropriately, it came at a particularly strange time for me, so the dark and spooky tone of the whole thing was a welcome one. I was ready for the change and it hit me just right - in fact I think that their release show (with TV on the Radio and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs) landing on my birthday was perfect, and if nothing else it provided a great distraction. Either way, once again they'd made a record that got me excited about music, while being nothing like what they'd done before.

Moving along to Drum's Not Dead - Though it was enjoyable and obviously built on the themes uncovered with They Were Wrong..., I didn't give it the attention it deserved at the time. I blame working at a record shop and being exposed to an overload of new music - not much from that time period really stuck very well.

Finally we're at today. Liars' fourth full length album is a self-titled one, and it makes perfect sense. After flirting with something dark and frightening and then possibly going entirely off the deep and and exploring primal rhythms, it's as if they were able to pick up their former selves from 2002 and teach them a few lessons - like how to simplify things and dance in new ways. Though there's much more rock (and, specifically, guitars) on Liars it's still the next logical step after stripping away all the guitars, somehow.

The first track (and first single) - "Plaster Casts Of Everything" - gets my vote for jam of the year already. I love a relentless beat behind a two note riff with shrieking vocals - the turn at the end is so satisfying to the earholes, I smile every time I hear it. To make it even better, the video is amazing (and of course, incredibly spooky): watch the video. Track two has already proven itself to be perfect mix cd fodder (for those times when you want a Beck song but don't want to go for an obvious single), and the rest of the album (which has only a few down moments scattered throughout it) manages to keep rocking with that unique dark pop style.

Liars is out today on Mute.

There is also a review of the record along with a download (for today only) of "Plaster Casts Of Everything" at CMJ.com.

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