The question to consider before listening to a new Liars record these days is not so much ‘what will Liars do next?’ as ‘what can Liars do next?’ Since emerging as part of the mostly depressing and awful dance punk scene of the early 2000s, Liars have spent their career hopping between stylistic terrains with such consummate ease that, with each shift in their sound, it looks alarmingly like there really might be very little they can’t do.
‘Mess’, though, is not the avant-prog opus I hoped for. Although I still entertain the notion that one day the trio will produce a record that attacks jazz rock with a scythe and Angus Andrew’s most laconic vocal drawls, in the meantime there’s ‘Mess’, which is…much the same as ‘WIXIW’ actually.
For the first time in the many years I have been listening to Liars I feel compelled to question whether or not they have really changed at all. With the electronic focus of its predecessor still very much the most distinctive part of its sound, ‘Mess’ finds Liars honing a craft rather than creating a new one, and it’s something they manage to do very successfully.
Vox Tuned D.E.D. and Mess On A Mission are, to use a technical term, bangers, while Can’t Hear Well and Left Speaker Blown are continuing proof that Liars are pretty much unmatched in the lo-fialt-balladeering stakes.
But, after numerous listens I realised Liars had tricked me. This isn’t the same band that made ‘WIXIW’ after all. Would that record have started with a distorted voice ordering the listener to “Take my pants off” or to “Smell my socks”? Would that record have made sense if it had blended the new beat-centric aesthetic of the band’s sound with the savage noise that they have deployed at choice moments in the past? Would that record have worked if it had dared take the same scattergun approach applied throughout ‘Mess’?
The answer to all those questions is, predictably, a resounding no. ‘WIXIW’ was a record by a band in a time and a place, experimenting with new sounds and songwriting techniques. It was a record about layering and structuring and mutation. ‘Mess’ is a record that sounds like its title. It sees Liars take everything they used on ‘WIXIW’ and fling it petulantly on the blank page in front of them. There’s even room for a nine minute exercise like Perpetual Valley, which sounds like Wolf Eyes with the harshest strains mixed out.
What has always made Liars so great is that they have managed to change their sound without ever compromising their identity, which, despite their determination to keep fans guessing, perhaps makes it easy to see their whole discography as one of continuity through purpose, if not through consistency of approach. ‘Mess’ proves that they are among the select few who conform to John Peel’s famous take on the Fall; Liars really are “always different…always the same”.
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