They Were Wrong So We Drowned - Liars 2004, Mute U.S. $16.98 amazon.com *****

music review.
These Liars aren’t even the same band

By Lester Smiley
Northern Light

The Liars would no doubt have you believe their new album is a “departure from their old sound.” But really, where is the line between “creative departure” and “half the band up and left, so we’re essentially now a totally different band?”

I will defend the Liars’ excellence to the end, having embraced their 2002 debut, “They Threw Us All In A Trench And Stuck A Monument On Top” as one of the great albums of our time, but who are they fooling? The Liars of “They Were Wrong So We Drowned” are undeniably a hollowed-out shell of the line-up that kicked so much ass on the first record.

The “Trench” line-up benefited from having one of the most insane rhythm sections in rock history. Bassist Pat Nature and drummer Ron Albertson positively tore it up, backing up the core songwriting unit of front man Angus Andrew and guitarist Aaron Hemphill with some truly epic beats and grooves.

However, they split up some time later because, according to Andrew, “We no longer really wanted to have our work interpreted by someone else; we needed to keep it as close to us and simplified as possible.” Yeah, whatever. I am so sure you “kicked out” the greatest thing about your band because they were interpreting the Liars’ music wrong. They were the Liars’ music!

Politics aside, the question remains: is there still a Liars with out the Liars’ rhythm section? “They Were Wrong…” doesn’t really leave us with any solid answer to that question. Instead, the album treads water; alternately issuing teasing glimmers of fresh mutant potential, skirting fallow fields of past majesty, as well as totally wanking around uselessly.

“Broken Witch” starts things off by making the new Liars’ mode of operation clear. A chugging six-minute spookfest, replete with minimal instrumentation and disconnected chanting–still confrontational, but bombast has been, by necessity, replaced with uneasy terror and preternatural breath.

The second track, entitled “Steam Rose From The Lifeless Cloak,” makes the album’s fundamental flaws clear. “They Were Wrong” is wretchedly padded. It could be a tight, focused album, were it not fatally weighted down with long, unneeded, “atmospheric” pieces like this.

The lead-off single, “There’s Always Room On The Broom” is a relatively accessible point, sounding like a loop of a dust-choked modem struggling to connect while the user loses his mind incanting verses about destroying high school.

More accessible, if only due to the fact that it sounds like a hushed version of an earlier Liars song, is the brilliantly titled “They Don’t Want Your Corn, They Want Your Kids.” It’s basically “Mr. You’re On Fire Mr.” from the “Trench” album as played by Pac Man while trying not to wake the kids.

Nominally a concept album about witches, “They Were Wrong…” plays like the best goth background noise one could possibly hope for: no cheesiness, no self-consciousness, just serious bleak horror all around. However, this is some terribly faint praise indeed for a band that once seemed likely to never occupy anything other than the brightest foreground.

‘Nominally a concept album about witches,
“They Were Wrong…” plays like the best goth background noise one could possibly hope for.’