Liars: They Were Wrong, So We Drowned : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

During the recent New York rock revival, Liars established themselves as one of the city's more exciting live acts, spazzing out onstage while six-foot-six-inch Australian lead singer Angus Andrew screamed half-intelligibly over the band's funk-punk pulse. That pulse is absent on Liars' second album, They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, an electronic-noise collage that sounds disturbingly rooted in the what-the-fuck? tradition of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. Purportedly inspired by a German Halloween-like holiday, "Broken Witch" opens the album with bell-like sound effects and sporadic snare hits, after which Andrew begs someone to tell him the tale of the children who stood in the way of the endless winter. "They Don't Want Your Corn They Want Your Kids" likewise forms a groove out of spastic drumming and electro blips, to no real end. Making a record about fear is one thing; making a record you fear listening to is quite another.

CHRISTIAN HOARD
(RS 943, March 4, 2004)