Liars: Magical [CD/12"] : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Fins, the Brooklyn-based Liars new EP, is nothing less than thrilling. The opening track, "Pillars Were Hollow and Filled with Candy So We Tore Them Down," features a kitchen sink assortment of drum machines and thrift store guitars, all battered with such ferocity and dementia that the heart can't help but race. "Every Day is a Child With Teeth" is a lurching distillation of Killing Joke, Sonic Youth, the Fall, A Certain Ratio, Pavement, Gang of Four, ESG, Beastie Boys, Interpol and Kylie. And "Grown Men Don't Fall in the River, Just Like That" throws attitude and contempt together with a curiously addictive melody, as gangly Australian singer Angus Andrew's declares with bravado only a New York buzz-band could muster, "We've got our fingers on the pulse of America."

AIDIN VAZIRI
(November 12, 2002)