Liars - "Plaster Casts of Everything"

So, something that taking 18 credits and fending off former frat brothers will do to you is completely remove you from current music. To the point where I'm only now cycling through stuff since the end of 2008 and some of the more obscure points of 2007... It's an arduous task but I'm on my way.

Case in point is today's song review: Liars - "Plaster Casts of Everything."

I need to make one thing very clear... I really, REALLY do not want to like Liars. Terminal hipsters. That's the only way I ever saw them. Their debut was mildly interesting, a danceable, punky prototype the Rapture would soon follow, but unfortunately it was too often marred by LSD inspired meanderings and drastic inconsistencies in the mix, though that might have been their point. Their dissonant, nearly unlistenable follow up, They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, eschewed any form of coherency for an elliptical narrative in the form of grotesque imagery and wasted hooks.

So I wrote them off. Until I was handed Drum's Not Dead. A shimmering soundtrack to an imaginary film, it was an absolutely beautiful record. My resolve was weakening, but I ended up regarding it as a flash in the pan. "They couldn't possibly repeat this feat!" I thought to myself.

After navigating through a very turbulent year and a half, I finally arrived back in the realm of indie music. And what was waiting for me? The Liars self-titled fourth album. Now, AMG Editor Stephen Erlewine made a very good point a while back, that self-titled albums are usually turning points. And it really couldn't be more true here. They've created an album that's immediate, and, most importantly, listenable.

So first track and single, "Plaster Casts of Everything." A wickedly distorted, horror-movie riff and the relentless thump of the rhythm section underpins a sense of panic that pervades the song. So much so, that when you hear Angus Andrew's paranoid voice floating in the back of the mix, drenched in reverb, it's not a stretch to think someone might be right behind you.

The twists and turns it takes are arresting. Between the stabs of tremolo-picked guitar and swells of distortion you really have no room to breathe. It's possessed enough of their nonlinear experimentalism to be a wildly bracing listen. Like most Liars songs, it begins and ends in a maze.

This is a fantastic example of a band shying away from experimental oblivion into something more immediate, but still remaining defiantly themselves. No other band could make a song like this. So I grudgingly tip my hat to you, Liars...

Bastards.