Liars - London Dingwalls, 7/8/2002

by Julia Willis

published: 10 / 8 / 2002

Julia Willis has a miserable time at a recent Sonic Mook Experiment showcase gig, which is only partially alleviated by headliners, the Liars....

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Hanging my head, impatiently tapping the floor with my foot, inhaling petulantly on a Silk Cut, drawing in my breath with a hiss as the smoke fills my lungs then fills the room. I whirl round, eyes blazing, sweaty and tetchy with the heat. "What I meant was, that it’s all very well to say it’s raw and it’s dirty rock n roll, but people get so caught up in what’s supposed to be ‘new’ and ‘now’ that what they can’t see is that the band can’t sing or play their instruments and look! They’re wasted." The smoke curls upwards. Another frantic pause as I suck heavily on the cigarette again, expelling the air with a sigh. "Dude. What I mean is, they’re shit. Listen. They’re not ‘interesting’. They’re shit." And there I was, ready to leave, before the Liars had even taken the stage because, if these lauded bands I had just seen were examples of what was to come then, that’s it. I’m going. Fuck warm VIP beer and "Dahling-you caaame. Come on, let’s like, listen to new bands and be radical. Oh Tarquin I love your outfit, is it vintage?" It’s okay to make raw lo-fi punk. It is not okay, however, to be shit. That’s not ‘like sooo fuckin' now’, it’s just excrement. Then, the Liars fill the stage with their awkward angular, elongated humanoid shapes. Then, the Liars fill the room with intelligent DIY prototypical dandy rock and knock the whole room to their goddamned senses. Retro punk punch careering across a modern electro glichscape performing their surreal avant-garde set from 'They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top', their debut album. Angus flails around the stage convulsing into the microphone punctuating the sound with his disembodied electronic voice as the audience shakes its collective hips. A towering figure who looks incongruous until he moves his limbs and his lips. He waggles his finger into the crowd in time with the beat prophetically screaming "We’ve got our fingers on the pulse of America". This is lo-fi, experimental, noisy, raw rock. But there’s a belief behind it. There’s a plan and it has a purpose. In an industry where you can gain musical credibility in return for zero talent provided you don’t mind faking: The Liars. Are not. Shit.