#1

Liars
Drum’s Not Dead
(Mute)

Liars are a band very few people apart from themselves expected to be where they are right now. In the dance-punk salad days of ’01, they were the toast of vintage denim ground zero: Brooklyn, USA. To know that they’d cover the amount of miles physically (including a stop in beauteous New Jerz on their way to becoming Berlin, Germany residents) and artistically, would either mean that you’re James Murphy’s narrator in “Losing My Edge” (“I was there when Captain Beefheart had their first practice…”) or a, umm, liar. (YES! I knew I could fit that in!)

Looking back at their initial sound, it’s kind of obvious that their ragged no-wave would either degenerate into tedium due to unfertile musical grounds or they would need to move somewhere different. They chose the latter and seriously distanced themselves from the then-blossoming scene they helped create, losing numerous fans and critical praise in their magnificently risky sophomore record, They Were Wrong So We Drowned. Virtually all of the touchstones of They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument On Top – funky bass, serrated guitars and steady start-to-finish drums – disappeared and in its place stood a monolithic concept record about witches. The sound was claustrophobic, paranoid and extremely foreboding “rock” that consisted of scratchy and staticy electronics, missing bass parts, creaking noises and terrifying chanting. I remember going to the Mute listening party and having their PR dorks apologize for “Steam Rose from the Lifeless Cloak” saying that “don’t worry the disc isn’t broken, this is how it’s supposed to sound”. Course, they were just making sure that no one left until the single (“There’s Always Room on the Broom”) came on. Yeah: not exactly top 100 hot singles material.

Clearly, Drowned was widely panned. It lived up to seemingly no one’s expectations and, weirdly, the sometimes open-minded world of independent music lovers couldn’t seem to grasp the direction they were moving in. I was of the opposite opinion – and I’m not trying to be a know-it-all pariah here, honest. I remember thinking it was a prescient grasp on modern day paranoia and terror. So I found it initially baffling that, 3 years later, when Liars released Drum’s Not Dead, another opaque set of songs, listeners and critics were warming back up again. But then I heard it again. And again. And again.

From the first song (“Be Quite Mt. Heart Attack!”) it’s much clearer this time that a concept’s at hand. Things begin with a lidocane of sine waves floating over heartbeat-like drums, the obvious focal point of the album. The breathtaking recording is immediately noticeable. Liars used an abandoned East German radio facility that provides a true fullness of sound that I’ve never heard before. But once that first track fades into “Let’s Not Wrestle Mt. Heart Attack” it’s clear that there’s a chance that people are going to get this. A weird synth preset oscillates underneath industrial drums all while Angus Andrew’s ghostly falsetto controls the direction. It’s a beautiful moment, possibly the albums’ best. But it’s a moment only eclipsed by the next track’s pump house rhythm, which is then eclipsed by…etc, etc, etc. Drum’s constant one-upmanship is incredible – you wonder where they’re going to go next and are always astonished by where they take it. And even though the idea could use some rest, yes, the concept develops, one that plays at a struggle between weakness and self-assurance. But it’s important not to key in on one thing here: it’s best to focus on the actual composition of the whole here. More than anything Drum’s Not Dead is a true album: one that grips you from the eerie premonitory notes until the heartbreaking beauty of “The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack”. It’s absolutely perfect.