LIARS – SISTERWORLD (MUTE)

LIARS – SISTERWORLD (MUTE)

For their fifth studio album Liars have bounced back with a fangled array of weaponry.  After a few diversions and distractions they are now back to their art-punk funk fresh.  Here is an act with Butthole Surfers tones with a death rattle now exercising a Beck like slacker vibe.  Or rather in their own words: “acting awkward, clumsy, uncoordinated.”

Being Australian in New York must be a strange thing.  Your accent already makes you stand out but when it’s served from a frame that towers above the herd as from a distance you look like the car crash combination of Gibby Haynes and Luke Skywalker, there truly needs to be method in your madness.  Angus Andrew lives up to that old adage: never trust a man with two first names.

Liars is a band that bonded over a love and appreciation for acts such as PIL and Gang Of Four which is an appreciation that has always seeped through in their most majestic moments.  Then their playfulness and general dishonesty, as derived from their moniker, has caused complication and annoyance.  This is an act that appears to take glee in toying with its listeners/audience.

Sisterworld is a subtle and jerky offering.  What kind of sick and twisted sphere is this?  For extended periods it is sedate as the creepy warm vocals of Angus insinuate the awful.  As with all good things, it’s not an easy listen coming with a drunk, menacing emerge.  Indeed tracks such as “Here Comes All The People” are downright horror movie paranoid.  Then there is the cult like chants of “I Still Can See An Outside World” which prompts the question: from where?  Ultimately it is a frustrating listen as a slow moving vehicle that often requests too much patience in the listener.  In other words, it is selfish.

Sometimes the new direction works as with the Krautrock of “Proud Evolution” and the near trip hop swaying swings and pulse on “No Barrier Fun” but it’s the destruction and devastation that you just want so much more.  A track like “Drip” just goes in one ear and out the other.

The high times prove few and far between.  “The Overachievers” stands out with its crazy motoring surf guitar haunted house ride sound while “Scarecrows On A Killer Slant” supplies the sound of bubbly and bouncing slaughter and Manson like delights.  It all begs the question: who are these people out to get?

I don’t know, exiting I am just left with the impression that here is a band that thinks they’re being smarter than they actually are.

Thesaurus moment: forestall.

Liars

Mute