Liars Liars Liars

In the world of experimental rock music, what makes the difference between a good album and a great album? In my mind, a great album is one that combines the intellectual or cerebral properties that are, by nature, part of anything that could be considered "experimental," with the emotional qualities of the best pop music (or any other kind of music, for that matter). Does it make you feel something? Does it absorb you and take you to a different place?

The new Liars album, Drum's Not Dead, is a great album.

The first thing anybody will notice about it is the drumming. Even if the word "drum" itself wasn't in the album title and half the song titles, the drums are omnipresent, thumping their way into a hypnotic groove on almost all of the tracks.

But as much as Drum's Not Dead is about rhythm, it's also about texture. Check out the gorgeous opener, "Be Quiet Mt. Heart Attack!" or the similarly beautiful "Drum Gets a Glimpse," which, with some high-pitched androgynous vocals, could easily fit in on a Sigur Ros record. Even the heavier songs with what sound like a chorus of tom-toms rapping away in a tribal rhythm feature amazing attention to detail. Listen for the way they manipulate the songs through the pitches of the drums themselves, and the way they augment them with pitchless percussive synth sounds in songs like "Let's Not Wrestle Mt. Heart Attack."

I guess my point here is that Liars have retained the gift for pounding rhythm that they've always had (even going back to their debut album), and added to it a heretofore undiscovered gift for melody and texture. If their last album, 2004's They Were Wrong So We Drowned, existed on almost a purely emotional level (being one of the most deeply unsettling albums I've ever listened to), Drum's Not Dead retains most of the eerieness of that album, and makes it a lot more interesting to listen to to boot. Not only that, it adds moments of shimmering beauty that were nowhere to be found in any of the previous Liars work.

Drum's Not Dead is easily the best album of Liars' short career, and meets expectations while still surprising. All in all, a terrific album.