Liars- Mess (2014)

Liars- Mess (2014)

You may remember that eerie dance Thom Yorke performed on the video for Radiohead`s Lotus Flower, yes, it was a weird take on Avant dance music inherited from some of Yorke`s favorite bands, call it Burial, call it Aphex Twin, call it Liars, personally I consider NY`s Liars the closed to the concept of Avant dance music, they were sort of lumped on the bandwagon of dance punk bands, but Liars is not an easy band to tag, and they have walked amazing paths into developing their particular sound, one too advanced for the regular dance crowd, but too cool if you are into Martian underground dance music, just give a listen to the stroboscopic synth lines in Mask Maker, the first track on their new Mess record, were you are struck by a powerful mutant groove, disco glimmer and surreal vocals out of a David Lynch nightmarish movie, but the scarier part of Mess, is that the following theme, Vox Tuned D.E.D. is even more menacing than the former, applying slight touches of Dr Screw  “chopped and screwed” techniques, slowing down the sound to achieve bizarre effects among powerful burst of synths.

Im No Gold has a strong and solid groove; Liars are expert on attaining infectious grooves thanks to their previous experience constructing percussion heavy records, like the abstract Drum`s Not Dead from 2006, here on Mess, their beats are pretty rough and the ghostly vocals are even a more hallucinating ambience, kind of bizarre, kind of nostalgic, with a certain resemblance to one time home studio king Ariel Pink, Pro Anti Anti on the other side has an unstoppable rhythmic quality rarely heard in music this day, its mechanic and primitive at the same time, it`s heavy and melodic at the same time, here, the band builds a powerful theme capable of demolishing whatever obstacle may appear on their way, brutish and delicate on its ornaments, with some pretty crystalline keyboards arrangements.

No matter how close this record may sound to dance music, it is a Liars record, and there are lots of experimental moments, endless cacophony, lots of dissonance, heavy reverberations and vocals from beyond, Can’t Hear Well kind of bears the soul, but not the soul of a human, perhaps the soul of an extraterrestrial creature, is an amusing static exercise, but it works and excels, even showing some elegance, while Mess On a Mission is complete brutal blow to the head, with those glorious Liars beat that only they can configure, and a sure one to put a spin on Yorke`s battered body.

Darkslide rescues some of the heavy percussive feeling of Drum`s Not Dead, adding also some fine touches of motorik beats, and a strong attention for the detail, the band creates a micro cosmos of organic sounds that contrast in a big way with the cacophonic beats, the band affinity for phase shifting sounds is evident here and put to great display, as they mutate the original bases of the theme in order to get something completely different in the run, and the on Boyzone they go from minimal to dissonant in a matter of seconds using both techno and quasi industrial sounds to create this strange beats looking perhaps in the title to achieve some equilibrium from one of their previous record, Sisterworld.

Heavy electronica gets on display on Dress Walker, its close in spirit to the vocoder experiments of the Mighty Neil Young on his amazing Trans record, augmented this time by the incessant infectious grooves by the band, who apply some of the phantasmagoria ambience of Burial on Perpetual Village, a beautiful nostalgic song that seems to sublimate in the air, closer Left Speaker Blown is a gloomy reflective number, a suicidal last note perhaps, and a very impressive way to close a very impressive record, I guess copycat Thom Yorke will be full of ideas after listening to Mess, I hope Radiohead next record could be half as good as Mess, then It would be ok.