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Liars:
They Were Wrong, So We Drowned
Mute, 2004
Rating: 4.3
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Posted: March 12,
2004
By
Laurence Station
A lot has changed for Liars since the band's attention-grabbing 2001
debut They Threw Us All in a Trench
and Stuck a Monument on Top. Bassist Pat Noecker and drummer Ron
Albertson left the band, leaving its founding members -- guitarist Aaron
Hemphill and singer Angus Andrew -- without a rhythm section. The duo
relocated from bustling New York City to the isolation of New Jersey's
woodlands, picking up percussionist Julian Gross in the process. All of
which has led to the biggest change of all, evident throughout the new
They Were Wrong, So We Drowned: the band's stylistic shift from
angular, urban dance-punk to primitive, discordant tribal-noise
experimentalism. Not to mention its subject matter: They Were Wrong
takes its thematic cues from medieval witch-hunts and Walpurgisnacht,
a German springtime celebration that -- according the legend -- is the
night witches meet on top of Brocken mountain, the country's highest peak.
The album's ten tracks alternate point-of-view between the fearful
reactions of Christians and the innocent women who suffered as a result of
their ignorance.
Co-produced by
TV on the Radio's David Andrew Sitek, They Were Wrong sports a
uniform tonality decidedly lacking on the band's debut: The coupling of
spare drumbeats with buzzing electronics and intermittently corrosive
feedback creates an unsettling vibe that highlights the pagan-inspired
back-story; Andrew's vocals primarily consist of blunt, monosyllabic
chants like "blood," "choke," "die," "thirst" and "cry;" the majority of
the hooks are obliterated by discordant noise. While this might seem like
an excessive exercise in inaccessibility (indeed, several critics have
likened the album to such fan-repellent fare as Lou Reed's Metal
Machine Music), the abrasive nature of the production meshes perfectly
with the band's goal: to shine a light on fear, especially during the dead
of night.
In that respect, They Were Wrong is a resounding triumph, from
the opening "Broken (spelled Brocken in the liner notes) Witch," with its
relentless marching beat and darkly incantatory lyrics; through the eerie
"We Fenced Other Gardens With the Bones of Our Own" (which features the
memorable, repeating line "Fly, fly, the devil's in your eye, shoot
shoot"); to the steady comedown of closer "Flow My Tears the Spider Said,"
which intimates dawn breaking and a retreat from the engulfing darkness.
"There's Always Room on the Broom" is the lone track that feels out of
place, primarily because it sounds relatively conventional -- dare we say
danceable -- compared to the rest of the material.
That the Liars choose to end things on the hopeful note of "Flow My
Tears," complete with chirping birds and the soothing sounds of the ocean,
nicely reinforces the idea of night-terrors and how reassuring something
as common as the break of day can be (especially for those living in a
time without such modern conveniences as electricity). It's that level of
thoughtfulness that makes They Were Wrong, So We Drowned such a
quantum leap for Liars, the group's The Bends to They Threw Us
All in a Trench's Pablo Honey. Though it might not be the most
easily digestible subject matter, it melds thought and execution as well
as any concept album in recent memory.
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