Four albums into their career, Liars take yet another artistic sharp turn; a set of relatively conventional rock songs. For listeners used to the contrary experimentalism of their last two records, Liars will be as polarizing as anything the group has done.
Putting aside my misgivings about their regained accessibility, I have to admit that Liars is most immediately enjoyable record the band has put out. Regardless of mercurial nature, I never expected to have one of their melodies stuck in my head. The synth fanfares and falsetto cooing on "Houseclouds" are typical here in the way they worm their way into your skull. Liars have always had a penchant for shouted choruses, and the clean defined vocal production lends itself to shouting along with them too. When vocalist Angus Andrew yells "Come Save Me!" on "Clear Island," he sounds more at home on an arena stage than some Walpurgisnacht bonfire.
In gaining pop accessibly Liars have largely abandoned the menace and secrecy that shrouded their records. The single "Sailing to Byzantium" is positively sedate: breezy syths and chiming electric piano ride over a loping bass and snare groove. The only darkness that colors this track is the kind found inside of a chic cocktail joint. The closer, "Protection," is a wistful ballad on childhood: a tremoloed organ fills the song with an ecclesiastic glow that underpins the sentimental subject matter
There are still some cloak and dagger moments on the album, especially on "Leather Prowler" and "The Dumb in the Rain." The murky guitar strum and monotone singing create a claustrophobia that adds gravity to the more buoyant sections of the album. These songs though, are still only isolated spots to a more polished whole.
Whenever a band changes their sound radically it will enviably anger the purists and any band that sells even marginally well will inevitably have to suffer from accusations of insincerity. Liars are certainly familiar with this kind of scrutiny. I still chuckle at the hostility that They Were Wrong, So We Drowned was greeted with when it was released in 2002. Five years gone, the pendulum has swung the other direction, with accusations of selling out already being foisted about. The argument would be convincing if this record had followed the wave of hype that greeted them at beginning of the decade. They didn't care then about the opinion of trend spotting journalists and fair-weather fans, why should they care now? If Liars excel in anything it is breaking preconceptions of what they as a band should sound like. Whatever the opinion on the actual music might be, they have at least done that.
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