Review: Liars

Although I'm still not the biggest fan of their newest record, I have to say Liars did impress me yesterday.

I have already seen Liars live three times and have mostly very positive memories of said shows. Even though my favorite show still remains the one in 2004 when they had just released their second record (and possibly my personal favorite of them)  They Were Wrong, So We Drowned and completely blew me away, the two other shows in between then and now (one at Festsaal Kreuzberg some years ago and the one at Volksbühne, together with Health) still were at least pretty good. In the end Liars also seem to be one of our blog favorites (see our last review here), so I knew this couldn't possibly go completely wrong.

Now touring with a recently released new record, it was very likely that they would also want to play these new songs live. As I said I'm still not that fond of WIXIW but I also don't really dislike it. It's a mostly electro dominated record and the thing I really appreciate about it is that Liars do on it what they do best: mess with people's expectations. They have managed to release six records altogether and every single one of them sounds somewhat different than the others. This way they have made many stylistic transitions from something like dancey post punk to experimental and noisy avant garde music, threw in an almost "rocky" record and released another one that was mainly based on drums as the central concept. And I liked every single one of them.

Review: Liars

I was torn whether go to to this or not. Initially, I wasn't sure I could afford it. Once I had the ticket I wasn't sure I could take it. Liars at Roter Salon seemed like such an odd choice, in terms of size and surroundings. Having forked out the cash and not being able to convince J. to go in my place, I was on my way to Mitte on a Sunday night, wondering how this was going to turn out.

Of course, you can never really go wrong with Liars, one of the best bands the current independent music scene has got to offer. Like so many incredibly good artists, Liars started out on the infamous Gern Blandsten Records, but they are on Mute these days. It is almost impossible to assign them a genre, but I have not yet met a person who had a bad thing to say about the band, be it their music or as people. I saw them perform with Health at Volksbühne a few years back and, well, Health. I cannot really appreciate any band in the same way when I've just seen Health perform. So this was another good shot at appreciating Liars as much live as I do on record. 

Liars

Not that I need to get any more excited about the Liars gig next month, but NPR is also streaming the entire new album at the moment and, let me tell you, it's amazing.

Listen to the album on NPR