The Liars are used to feeling a bit uncertain. The group’s second album, “They Were Wrong So We Drowned,” was met with almost universal disdain; Rolling Stone panned the record in a one-star review (out of five), while Spin gave the album an F, calling it “unlistenable.”
This makes it all the more interesting that the trio’s latest, the exceptional “Drum’s Not Dead” (Mute), chronicles the struggle between two characters: Drum, a figure born of cocksure swagger, and Mt. Heart Attack, the embodiment of stress and self-doubt.
Reached in Louisiana at the start of the Liars’ North American tour, Angus Andrew, the band’s Australia-born, six-foot-six-inch frontman, insists that Mt. Heart Attack did not develop from the critical backlash surrounding “Drowned.” “That [self-doubt] has been with me and with us the whole time,” he says. “From the beginning we’ve been a nervous and insular band. It’s tough to know where we fit in.”
In fact, Andrew repeatedly expresses concern that the Liars are thought of as “weird,” particularly since he believes the band really tried to make an emotional connection with its latest album. Drum and Mt. Heart Attack are not sci-fi characters, Andrew says, they simply represent the duality we all have within us–one side being positive and the other being cerebral and sad. (“I think,” says Andrew, “we can all relate to those ideas.”)
Like the hypnotic “Drowned,” which was a sharp left turn from the band’s dance-punk debut, “Drum’s” is yet another dramatic departure–not only in terms of sonics and concept, but also in locale. The album was recorded at Planet Rock Studios in Berlin, Germany, a city that Andrew now calls home. Affordable working conditions allowed the band more time to experiment in the studio, a luxury it didn’t have with “Drowned,” recorded in a single claustrophobic month in Andrew’s New Jersey home.
“[Moving to Berlin] was daunting, but it gave me the opportunity to feel very out-of-context and alien, which works for me,” says Andrew. “I think right after that first record, we learned that it’s much more exciting to put down things you’ve become comfortable with, and move on to things that you’ve never touched before.”
But the move to Berlin also magnified a growing rift between the singer and guitarist/co-founder Aaron Hemphill, who lives in Los Angeles and briefly debated leaving the band to return to school at “Drum’s” completion.
“It was really difficult to know exactly where we stood,” says Andrew. “And Aaron and I aren’t the most communicative people, so a lot of it just had to follow its path.”
The album almost functions as a conversation between bandmates. Hemphill was doing most of his writing in L.A., while Andrew remained secluded in Berlin working out his own ideas for the record. Andrew describes this cross-cultural writing process as “uncertain,” saying: “We write very differently and sometimes you’re like, `How is this going to work?’ It was a very trying sort of process in the sense of refiguring how a band works and how you work with another person.”
Many of the dozen tracks are rhythm-based, with tribal drums evoking nighttime treks past Mayan ruins and shadowy voodoo ceremonies. The band embraced this percussion-heavy sound, often setting up two kits in the studio so that drummer Julian Gross and Hemphill could bash out a polyrhythmic symphony.
“They’ve got these huge drum orgies going on in each song,” says Gareth Jones, who mixed the record in London. “If you’re looking for a lot of melody, this is not the record for you. It’s like looking for color in a black-and-white film. To me it’s about tones and rhythms and energy.”
The album also contains the Liars’ most direct song to date, a tender ballad called “The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack.” Over a guitar line so fragile it sounds as if it might disintegrate at the slightest touch, Andrew coos, “If you need me I can always be found.” The tune is, in essence, a love song between bandmates.
Says Andrew: “It’s a very different song for us. And in a lot of ways I don’t think it’s something we could have come together on until we began to realize some different things about each other.”
Liars
When: 9:30 p.m. Sunday
Where: Logan Square Auditorium, 2539 N. Kedzie Ave.
Price: $12; 773-525-6178
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