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liars theappledrop
Artist: Liars
Title: The Apple Drop
Genre: Alternative / Experimental Rock
Release Date: 6th August 2021
Label: Mute Records / Pias


Album Review

Weird, cool, experimental, hard to categorise… words that can either open doors into whole new realms of sonic artistry, or send shivers of dread down the quivering spines of those to whom pretentiousness is anathema. Life really is too short, for example, to analyse the long and rambling musical journey of a band like THE FLAMING LIPS, and decide where kookiness and inventive genius got all in a tangle with drug over-confidence, and a kind of forced cute-creativity and zaniness. LIARS do weird, cool, experimental and hard to categorise in a way that allows you to relax into them from the off - it’s not always easy listening, but somehow, it’s all just meant to be this way, and there’s no feeling of odd for the sake of odd.

You could imagine sole remaining founder Angus Andrew (he’s been at this for over twenty years now, bless him) telling you a story, perhaps huddled by a spluttering fire on a chilly winter’s night, that ends up meandering off somewhere far, far away from where it was originally heading. Yet it would still be charming and challenging and engaging and, ultimately, satisfying. That, you could say, is the method in the madness with LIARS.

Latest album ‘The Apple Drop’ is an unusually comfortable mix of electronics and studio burbling with the warmth of more organic instruments, and a heavy lean on drums, kept loosely in check with vocals that are never over-demanding, but won’t send you to sleep either. On ‘The Start’, there’s a drama to the dreaminess that keeps the above-the-clouds floatiness far more interesting than a stoner’s recounting of some yawny hippy trip. ‘Big Appetite’ skips and trips about over some endearing guitar, gradually waking itself up into something approaching a measured frenzied, and ‘Sekwar’ is deliciously bonkers, sounding at times like THE FALL back in their prime. And who sounds like THE FALL?

‘Star Search’ is possibly an experiment too far, the only track here sounding genuinely lost and unsure of itself. But ‘My Pulse To Ponder’ pushes everything forwards again, with harsh guitars and a nagging, dragging heavy beat and lots of references to cutting throats. Nice. ‘King Of The Crooks’ keeps things lounge and lazy, a slow-motion swagger with the smell of stale whisky all over it, and to ease you off into the stratosphere is the fractured, drunk-jazz of closing track ‘New Planets New Undoings’, a slice of strangeness you feel RADIOHEAD have been trying to write for a decade at least. It’s an oddly beautiful way to end the album, leaving a feeling of things unsaid and unanswered, but in a way that doesn’t matter. All that does matter is you made it this far.

As long as bands like LIARS continue to gently push the boundaries of not only their own musical legacies, but those of their peers, then there is a sense that limits will never be reached, and stagnation is a choice rather than an inevitability. And there’s something hugely comforting in that.


Tracklist

01. The Start
02. Slow And Turn Inward
03. Sekwar
04. Big Appetite
05. From What The Never Was
06. Star Search
07. My Pulse To Ponder
08. Leisure War
09. King Of The Crooks
10. Acid Crop
11. New Planets New Undoings


Line-up

Angus Andrew
Cameron Deyell
Laurence Pike


Website

https://liars.bandcamp.com / https://www.facebook.com/LiarsOfficial


Cover Picture




Rating

Music: 8
Sound: 8
Total: 8 / 10




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