Liars - 'They Were Wrong So We Drowned' (Mute)
4/5
By: Tim Dellow
Incantations bleed across the stereo-tracks, each line corrupting the next in a ritual of bloodletting bestiality. A coven of reassembled drums drag you into the dark woods, tension building as goosebumps cover your neck like blisters swelling into an uneasy boil of panic.
An album that doesn't go anywhere, abandoning you amongst guitar-lines that scratch at your face, possessed trees whose branches snatch at your skin as you run blindly in circles. There's no way out. The Liars have enticed you in with their previous album of Punk-Funk, ditching their sound completely just as it reaches popularity, leaving you with a Resident(s) spirit who loosens your bowels for forty minutes before ditching you in a Blair forest of foreboding doom.
Yes, Liars highlight your lack of control, your curiosity being rewarded with a subversion of everything that you were once comfy with; birdsong seems to mutate into spirits sobbing, you hear a train, is it the way home or just another illusion?
'Oh, so it's Goth? I can handle Goth? Some self-knowing NYC hipsters attempt at a concept album. I've already got 'The Scream'.'
Well, f**k you. Witches don't actually listen to Norwegian Death metal. They go to their suburban town-houses in Cherokees, blasting out Randy McGraw's favourite country moments. At night, however, they bust out the tribal drums and Gregorian chants to soundtrack the Hansel and Gretel chainsaw massacre, payback for Christ's drowning of a thousand Salem women. The liars have been there. And that's the truth.
So, yes, it's not an easy album to like - but as well as scaring the shit out of you, it knows it looks good in black; track-three is 'Prince or Frankie', inaugurating the pleasure-dome.
But sex with spirits is never safe, and when a pencil scribbles a hex across your eardrums you panic about the consequences of these guilty pleasures. You followed 'em in. Now you must pay the price.
Artists in this article: Liars
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