Now that I'm finally done writing about 2005 music stuff, time to move onward! First up: Liars! Liars (they would create far fewer grammatical oddities if they would simply use "the" in front of their name) impressed me greatly with their 2004 album They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, which was a concept album about witches in medieval Germany or something. It's possibly the only concept album about witches to ever be good, although I'm not saying it's the only concept album about witches ever made, because there's probably a Helloween or Mercyful Fate record I don't know about. Anyway, I liked it because it was challenging, creative, and uniquely unsettling. How anybody could create a recognizable riff out of murky and atonal electronic buzzing sounds or make a vocal hook out of three people chanting "WE ARE THE ARMY YOU SEE THROUGH THE RED HAZE OF BLOOD!" is beyond me, but they did it somehow. That album was the 2004 counterpart of the latest Fiery Furnaces album, another drastic style shift that alienated a lot of fans but that I loved.
Anyhoo, they're coming out on February 20 (according to their website) or March 21 (according to allmusic.com) with a new album, Drum's Not Dead, which was originally supposed to be released last October. Seeing as how there was such a dramatic shift in style between their first and second albums, I can't wait to hear what they've done for their third. If the advance single "It Fit When I Was a Kid" is any indication, they've kept the thumping tribal rhythms of They Were Wrong, So We Drowned and added actual, recognizable melodies (the closest previous reference is probably "We Fenced Other Houses With the Bones of Our Own" from They Were Wrong, still one of my favorite song titles ever). Not that it's a pop song by any stretch of the imagination. It's still as impossibly creepy as anything on They Were Wrong, except here the eeriness comes from the droning organ that comes in halfway through the song and the deadpan vocal melody that creeps slowly along, like a children's song corrupted by a vaguely disturbing nightmare where you just know something is lurking in the shadows. If you're inspired to download the song, stick it out until about the halfway point, which is where the song starts to get really interesting.
Music aside, they've also chosen a cover for the new single that's rather, um... interesting. And originally they wanted to release it on edible paper. Just to give you an idea of how weird these guys can be.
Drum's Not Dead has already been leaked on the internet, but I've chosen to wait... for now. A look at the track listing reveals that this is probably another concept album, though: almost all of the tracks either use "Drum" as a name (apparently of a character who isn't dead) or reference a "Mt. Heart Attack" in some way. I have no idea what on Earth any of that could mean, but I can't wait to find out.
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