Album of The Week: 9.1

Liars

WIXIW

(2012)

why you'll love it: Creepy and memorable. Genius application of electronics

why you'll hate it: slow, droning vocal delivery. Devoid of rock and guitars.

Hello. I'm back in business, and just in time. When I took my break, I only had one review left in my chamber (this one). Now I have at least three (maybe 4), plus the dozen or so albums that are out this month! I've gone from drought to flood, and wondering if there are enough weeks to be caught up before the end of the year. Oh well. One album at a time. I deliberately left this one hanging since June for a good reason - I think it's the best album of 2012 so far. If you haven't picked up WIXIW yet, that is a shame; because its subtle greatness may get lost in the shuffle of flashier releases over the second half of the year.

Liars is an experimental rock group that have been deconstructing and rebuilding themselves almost every trip into the studio. They started out 10 years ago as a "Don't call us a fucking" dance punk band. With bitterness, they scrapped that sound for the noise rock edge they became most well known for. Once that became too predictable, they morphed into the creepy atmospheric band you hear on WIXIW.

Admittedly, this album owes a lot to Radiohead's electronic renaissance of ten years ago (from Kid A to Hail To The Thief). The track "Ring on Every Finger" even sounds similar enough to Radiohead's "Myxomatosis" that it could be considered a cover. The reason you don't see so many people on the internet calling foul on this record is because of all the bands to take a page from Radiohead, Liars possesses the depth and complexity to make it their own.

Now here comes the hard part of this review… trying not to evoke the magic word that renders all experimental music null - "pretentious". To describe Liars' songwriting (especially from the past few years) is like having a dream about real life. Their music videos convey the feeling of the songs perfectly. It's the world around us, but something is wrong. Time isn't lining up right, you feel drunk, little things aren't what they should be… I held off writing this review for so long in order to share more insight into the songs on WIXIW, but found that the mystery is what I enjoy. It's what keeps me coming back. I don't want to know more. It's not about figuring out the puzzle. It's about being lost in the fog.

Wait! No, don't turn away! Give me one more chance! WIXIW isn't a mess of an album, or convoluted just for the sake of it. Despite the big question mark, the whole thing is quite accessible on the ears, and there are melodies throughout. The abrasive feedback on just about every other album is entirely nixed for muted synthesizers. Sonically, the most someone could complain about this album is that it is boring, but not hard on the ears whatsoever. Subtlety is what makes this album so great. The whole thing just gives you that "I've got a bad feeling about this" vibe, and you can't quite put your finger on it. The way the songs are composed just gives the tiniest itty bitty touch of paranoia or claustrophobia.

Going just by this month alone, there is still a ways to go for 2012, but the hypnotizing mystery of WIXIW still has my imagination soaring every time I listen to it. Like everything Liars does, it's not conventional, and will turn many people away, but this feels like the most important album they've made. Its subtlety makes more of an impression on me than any of their noisy experiments have.