Tag: Liars.

PLAYLIST: 18 Essential Halloween Songs

If the theme songs from X-Files and The Twilight Zone or repeated plays of “Monster Bash” and “Thriller” aren’t quite getting you in the mood for Halloween, have no fear (see what I did there?).  AudioFemme has compiled a list of the creepiest choruses and bone-chilling ballads, guaranteed to spookify your Spotify and haunt your headphones all season long.

1. Cat Power – Werewolf: At the crux of all lycanthropic legend is the intense pain experienced in the transformation from human to monster.  Sometimes the focus is on the excruciating physical changes – teeth and claws elongate, fur bursts flesh, etc. but the poignancy in the myth is the loss of control to the whims of the full moon and the bloodlust it brings to even the most timid changelings.  Chan Marshall’s baleful crooning and the spidery strings that anchor this romantic re-imagining of age-old folklore are the perfect expression of the mutant’s pain.

2. The Cramps – I Was A Teenage Werewolf:  Lux Interior and Poison Ivy made a name for themselves and their band by referencing horror and sci-fi iconography in many of their songs, and this jam is the quintessential piece of theatrical surf-rock that put their sound on the map.  Named for the 1957 movie starring Michael Landon (in which psychological experiments turn a troubled teen into something more sinister), the desperation this track captures is not just that of the werewolf’s plight, but that of being a teenager as well.  No one even tries to intervene with the wild mood swings and violent outbursts of our protagonist despite his begging cries.  And who can blame them – have you been near a high school around 3PM?  Teenagers: more frightening than werewolves.

3. Thee Oh Sees – Night Crawler: Thee Oh Sees are a band that love to infuse their raucous punk-rock with gruesome imagery and a dash of creepy vibes.  The towering guitar squall, futuristic synths and distorted vocals on this track, from this year’s excellent Floating Coffin LP, make me feel like I can see and hear in monster-vision as I prowl through the city at odd hours, deformed by toxic slime, just… you know… looking for a little love.

4. Misfits – Skulls: The 80’s horror punk crew took cranium collection to a whole new level with this quintessential anthem.  We don’t know why Glenn Danzig wants our skulls (or the skulls of little girls) nor do we know how they’ll be affixed to Danzig’s wall (has he commissioned and built a special shelving unit? Will the bone fragments be assembled haphazardly to his cracked plaster?) except to say this: he is a demon and bathes in the blood of decapitated bodies.  Demons just need skulls, okay?

5. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Red Right Hand: The king of murder ballads outdid himself with this one.  It’s essentially a tale of a mysterious stranger whose all-encompassing power seems culled from malevolent sources; he can get you what you want, but it may cost you your soul.  Nick Cave’s warnings are snarled over loungey organ, orchestra hits, crackling percussion, and even some musical saw, making it an indelible Halloween staple that sounds like no other.  But it truly endures because of the intrigue of the elusive man with the red right hand.  Like Nick Cave himself, he’s a ghost, he’s a God, he’s a man, he’s a guru.

6. Liars – Broken Witch: Angus Andrew chants the word blood over and over again and incites what sounds an awful lot like some kind of Satanic spell with horses and bears and stuff.  From 2004’s brilliant Salem witch trials themed concept record They Were Wrong So We Drowned, a record which you should probably play in its entirety every October if you are not already in the habit of just listening to it all the time, like I did back in college.  See also: “There’s Always Room On The Broom” if you’re having an actual dance party.

7. Donovan – Season of the Witch: In 1967, Donovan was busy shedding his folksy reputation for a more eclectic one, which drew on styles as disparate as calypso and psychedelica.  On the latter end of those explorations, we have classic psychedelic jam “Season of the Witch”, a song about shifting identities and the strangeness of human personality.  When you break it down, the song is really about adopting identities and how in turn that makes all of us changeable, as though under a spell.  And while that doesn’t have anything to do with Halloween directly, it’s easy enough to apply to your experience costume shopping at Ricky’s.

8. Talking Heads – Psycho Killer:  Here’s the thing about serial killers: you don’t ever really know why they do what they do.  In general, their murderous sprees seem to stem from a deep hatred of the human race and complete lack of regard for life or personhood.  That’s what makes them psychotic.  You don’t have to understand French to get where David Byrne is going with this 1977 anthem that flips the point of view to that of a killer who at the beginning of the song just seems like he needs a little rest and maybe some Lexapro, and increasingly spazzes out until he’s ending lives left and right and reveling in the glory of it.  With misanthropes like these, it’s best just to let them be.  And with bass lines like this, it’s best to dance like the psycho you’ll hopefully never become.

9. Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice – Genesis Joplin: So you want to join a coven?  Well you’re gonna have to dance around with minotaurs and stuff.  A bunch of devils are gonna wake you up in the middle of the night and draw weird stuff all over you (probably in blood).  And then maybe you’ll write a super-chill a cappella jam about it, with just a little sparse percussion to back your possessed howls, but you don’t really have to if you don’t want to because Wooden Wand has you covered.  James Jackson Toth’s now ex-wife Jessica sings this one and her voice sounds as smokey and witchy as it needs to sound to pull off poetry that could’ve been ripped from a page out of the Necronomicon.

10. Girls – Ghost Mouth: Christopher Owens has here cast himself as the loneliest, saddest spirit left behind, trying to get to Heaven.  It’s probably a metaphor for simply feeling like a ghost, but actually being a ghost is probably also as sad and confusing as Owens’ living, breathing existence.

11. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffitti – Creepshow: Seedy and weird as only early Ariel Pink can be, this track seethes with macabre laughter, horror-movie samples, pornographic squeals, and stalker-inspired lyrics droned in low octaves.  It perfectly captures the sleaziness of dressing up like a “sexy” version of something only to find yourself in the wrong part of town, whisked into a dilapidated theater for a slasher flick you can’t be sure the actors actually survived.

12. Echo & The Bunnymen – The Killing Moon: Who doesn’t love this song?  The kind of person you slay as a sacrifice to the Lunar God, that’s who.

13. The Microphones – Headless Horseman: Phil Elverum’s acoustic ballad about the the Headless Horseman’s painful transition from “mighty human man” to terrifying monster is an extended metaphor for loss and shifting perceptions in relationships.  But he’s certainly got an admirable knack for making lines like “I walked aimlessly around with a flaming pumpkin head” sound pretty and melancholic instead of ridiculous.  Maybe Danzig will let him borrow one of those skulls he’s been so fervently collecting?

14. The Luyas – Channeling: Montreal band The Luyas wrote most of this record after the sudden death of a close friend and even give credit to “the ghost” in its liner notes; “Channeling” is a seancing song wherein Jessie Stein invites specters to make a host of her.  She makes contact through the repetition of the spirit’s name and in trying to hear the key of its voice, promising “I will let you disappear / so long, so long / But I’m giving you my ear / come play your song / if you’d like to stay a while / this way, this way / You can use my body now / To play, to play”.  As someone who’s never been able to say “Bloody Mary” in front of a bathroom mirror even once, I have to admire the bravery of that invitation.

15. Timber Timbre – Demon Host:  It might not keep the Halloween dance party going, but this acoustic gem pits Taylor Kirk’s haunted wails against questions about spirituality and the nature of death.  Instead of trickery, we’re treated to gorgeous imagery over quietly strummed guitars that burst into lush, ghostly chorales and twinkling piano.  It’s right at home on the band’s 2009 self-titled album, which features several tracks with still creepier vibes – so much so the band made the album available to fans for free on Halloween the year of its release.

16. Tu Fawning – Multiply A House: Swooning trumpets and startling vocals are only the beginning of this moody murder ballad; the lyrics are darker than a black cat at midnight.  Over a deliberate drumbeat, vocalist Corinna Repp sings about sinking bodies and being haunted by houses.  Hollowed-out flutes lend atmospherics toward the end of the track, as Repp coos “you’ll be the only one on the hill alive.” Listening to this is like Cliff’s Notes for reading House of Leaves.

17. Wymond Miles – The Thirst:  Against a thudding bassline and immediate guitars tinged with new-wave tropes, Wymond Mile’s plaintive vocals relate what could be a vampiric love story: “Death’s kiss upon your lips, a gentle curse / teach me tonight what that spell is worth” he pleads during the second verse.  The choruses are spattered with mentions of pale bodies and the moon and death and fire and the song unfurls anthemic from those reference points.  It’s too dark for the Twilight saga, but might be right at home on the soundtrack for Xan Cassavete’s excellent Kiss of the Damned.

18. Kanye West – Monster: As much as I really wanted to put “Werewolf Barmitzvah” on this list, the final spot goes to Kanye’s beastly boasting on this single from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.  Dark, twisted, and beautiful, yes, with a terrifying music video to match, this song features all-star guest appearances from Jay-Z, Nicki Minaj, and Rick Ross, all of whom bring the movie-monster metaphors into heavy play.

Liars Bring New Songs To NYC

After thoroughly enjoying last summer’s set at Webster Hall, I was pumped to see Liars not once but twice this past weekend.  The first show was in the Met’s Temple of Dendur, which is about as epic as a setting gets.  The band literally played amongst the ruins of the monument, built in 15 BC by Petronius, Roman governor of Egypt and relocated to the museum’s Sackler Wing in 1978 after being gifted to the United States to save it from flooding created by the Aswan Dam.  The acoustics were either awesome or jarringly echoic depending on where you were standing, and where you were standing depended on gallery officials adhering to fire codes, but hey.  The trippy projections flashing behind Angus Andrew and company were probably more than twenty feet wide and plenty enthralling if your vantage point was less-than ideal for watching the band.

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Liars in the Temple of Dendur.
Liars in the Temple of Dendur.

The following night, Liars visited (le) poisson rouge for a show that by then was starting to seem like it had been cursed by King Tut himself.  First, the venue changed from Brooklyn’s Masonic Temple for unspecified reasons.  Scheduled openers Lower Dens dropped off the bill around the time the venue change was announced.  Doldrums stepped up to occupy the opening spot but were foiled by the theft of Airick Woodhead’s laptop and passport, so the Toronto band never made it to Brooklyn, and Liars took the stage promptly at 8:30.

liarslpr

Both sets included songs from WIXIW, Liars most-recent (and most electronic) release.  Considering that they’d already toured in support of the record, it was surprising they were doing these shows at all; as it turns out, the purpose of both was to debut all-new material.  The new songs are, once again, heavy on the electronics and driven by pounding beats, but possess a darkness and urgency not unlike the mood of 2004’s witch-worshipping classic They Were Wrong, So We Drowned.  The only actual foray into that material was during the encore at LPR, which ended with crowd pleaser “Broken Witch”.  There were no encores at the Met so for those who, like myself, had attended both, it felt like a treat.

You can watch a video for “Who Is The Hunter” (from WIXIW) here.  Below, check out video of a new song, which according to their somewhat cryptic handwritten setlist might be called something like “Can’t Hear”.  It’s far more relaxed and sparse than some of the other new stuff they played, lest ye naysayers worry Liars are losing their edge.  The fact that Angus Andrew is pushing forty at this point doesn’t seem to be slowing him down at all.  They’ll be playing MoMA PS1’s Warm Up this season on August 31st.

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Audiofemme’s Favorite Albums of 2012 (So Far)

It’s July, a month in which listing the best albums of the year so far has become nearly as ubiquitous in the blogosphere as making a list of the best albums of the year in December. Here at Audiofemme, we aren’t so much into ranking the releases of the last six months as we are simply highlighting the music that’s made us super excited to be doing what we’re doing. The following list is by no means comprehensive – we really need some more time with the new Spiritualized record to wrap our brains around it. We can barely keep up with the bi-monthly output of, say, Ty Segall or Family Perfume. We’re saving ourselves on that Sigur Ros album til we see them live in Prospect Park at the end of this month. Dirty Projectors’ Swing Lo Magellan deserves a whole essay rather than a brief blurb. And you’re probably already tired of hearing about how great Grimes is, so we took a mini-break from extolling her virtues.  We have a feeling we’ll still be raving over the following selections in six months, so you’ve got plenty of time to run down to the record store and buy us some vinyl before the holidays hit.

Death Grips – The Money Store: Zach Hill’s newest side project melts faces in a way that last year’s Exmilitary only hinted was possible. Its innovative melding of experimental hip-hop rhythms and aggressive lyrical flow, paired with rapid-fire samples and grinding electronics manages to harness an intense energy while avoiding the pitfalls of akin genres which can be grating, uncreative, and way overhyped (coughcoughdubstepcough). It’s hard to get over an opening scorcher like “Get Got” (especially when producer Andy Morin turns up the echo on Stefan Burnett’s staccato “stopstopstopstopstopstopstop”) but the album is full of dark gems and deep jams. Fuzzy gongs resonate through “Double Helix”, detached blurbs of sampled pop keys bubble out over “Hustle Bones”, “Fuck That’s” bouncy bongos back Burnett’s riotous yells, gloried synth hooks adorn “Bitch Please”. The group will release a companion album, No Love, in the fall of this year, so it will be interesting to see how the two albums play off one another. Not to mention we’ve got our fingers crossed for an insane tour.

Purity Ring – Shrines: What began as a mysterious and infectious single from a band with the same name as a nearly forgotten emo-punk outfit has transcended its steady trickle of carefully guarded tracks into an auspicious debut that crackles and explodes. The band’s innovative live show is just one angle from which they’ve perfected their aesthetic, and every moment on Shrines feels like magic. Megan James and Corin Roddick deftly transform what are essentially pop songs into something closer to fairy tales, helped by James’ abstract poetics and Roddick’s well-timed production. Album standout “Fineshrines” is a perfect example of the way the two work together, and it still breaks my brain after about a thousand listens, somehow capturing exactly what I always want to feel in song form.

Friends – Manifest!: Anticipation for the debut from Brooklyn-based band Friends began building last year with the release of their single “I’m His Girl”, quite possibly the best argument for open relationships to garner any sort of popularity since TLC’s “Creep”. With that kind of momentum, there’s always a danger that a band might not live up to the hype. But Friends have offered a collection of songs that are not only ultra-catchy and party-ready but also delve into complex topics like female relationships and self-respect with surprising intelligence. Initial fears that lead singer Samantha Urbani’s vocals might at times become grating or that her hip-hop influenced style might lead to some embarrassing moments á la Blondie’s “Rapture” are quickly put to ease – the girl not only has style for miles but a strong set of pipes as well.

Mac DeMarco – Rock and Roll Night Club: In March Captured Tracks released Canadian creepster Mac DeMarco’s seedy, darkly-tinged debut in which he “recorded a whole bunch of songs on a 4-track, slowed them down, sang like Elvis, and slowed that down a little bit too”. The result is presented as an artifact from another universe where radio a.) still exists b.) dials from grimy “96.7 The Pipe” to groovy “106.2 The Breeze” and c.) plays nothing but blocks of Mac DeMarco tracks. The result makes me wish DeMarco would stalk me. I’d pretend I didn’t like it, but I’d start spending more time in dark alleys hoping I’d catch him in the act.  Though DeMarco’s approach is sometimes comical and his live presence purposely pushes the awkward, the languid guitar riffs do feel like something of a lost transmission from an alternate reality where pop music has been distorted for the better.  If Rock and Roll Night Club were a physical location, I’d invoke 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon by repeatedly saying “I want to go to there” until I was transported.  Fortunately, the album does aurally what science has yet to accomplish.

Phédre – Phédre: For a band that pretty much came out of nowhere (actually, it was Toronto), Phédre has managed to blow us away. Their self-titled debut is loaded with infectious production but sealed with the gritty kiss of DIY ethos. The trio (formed by Airick Woodhead, April Aliermo, and Daniel Lee) has created a perfect balance of hyperactive hooks and slowed-down sludge, while distorted, bleary male and female vocals act as oozing cherry on the melted sundae of it all. There’s rapping, there’s punk rock, and there’s lots of sexual innuendos and nods to mythology. Listening to this record feels like taking part in an orgy without the messy and awkward reality of one. What should be a hot mess is actually mesmerizing, an effect enhanced by the feeling that the band never takes themselves too seriously due to a preference for nonsense and debauchery.

Peaking Lights – Lucifer: Having a five-month old son hasn’t slowed Aaron Coyes and Indra Dunis down one bit. They’re still touring and have just released a new album that sees them further exploring the experimental electronic routes they’ve breached since forming their band. Lucifer is loop-laden, playful, and showcases Peaking Lights’ trademark fuzzy disco dub on most backing tracks, but there’s more sensitive material here as well. The couple’s tribute to their son, Miko, appears early in the album as a pretty little piano ditty. After dabbling in these lovely, lazy beginnings, the back half of the record lands the listener squarely in Peaking Lights’ wheelhouse, with Coyes’ oscillating samples and eclectic, watery beats pinning down Dunis’ smoky, echoic vocals. It’s the perfect follow-up to last year’s breakout 936 and an automatically wistful portrait of the band at this moment in their careers and personal lives.

Radiation City – Cool Nightmare: This little noise-pop gem was initially circulated via bandcamp by the Portland based quintet. It’s the follow-up to a critically acclaimed debut, and the band’s pride in the new work shows – they released gorgeous physical copies on their own label (Apes Tapes), with laser-cut sleeve sheathed milk-white vinyl and a gold cassette tape being among the purchasing options. But it’s the music therein that’s truly mesmerizing. Though guitarist Cameron Spies’ vocals make laconic appearances from time to time, it is the haunting, distant coos by Lizzy Ellison that stick indelibly in one’s grey matter; standout track “Eye of Yours” blends these two elements to perfection upon a palette of ominous piano plunking that blossoms into sunny trumpets and twangy guitar. That piano, by the way, was a decrepit artifact from drummer Randy Bemrose’s basement and became the inspiration for the whole album.  Every sound it makes as at deteriorates is part of the auditory landscape on Cool Nightmare, the cover of which it graces. The band laid the ancient instrument to rest in the video for lead-off single “Find It Of Use”.

Frankie Rose – Interstellar: As a former member of several prolific noise pop acts (Vivian Girls, Dum Dum Girls, and Crystal Stilts) one might expect Frankie Rose’s second solo album to be very much in that same sort of vein – jangly guitars, vocal bravado, and pounding drums. But Interstellar sees Rose scale these elements back just enough to set the work totally apart. Her energetic nods to new wave, the vaguely cosmic theme, and cohesive production are perfect foils for the strength of  Rose’s songwriting, notable in that it showcases the first moments in which she’s allowed herself to explore a more vulnerable musical persona.  But the songs here are anything but wallflower’s anthems; she challenges listeners in lead-off track “Know Me” to drop the pigeonholing game for a moment and examine the depth in what she’s presented.  And really, there’s so many hazy, wonderful layers in these tracks that it would be a disservice to oneself not to obey her.

Chromatics – Kill For Love: Johnny Jewel and friends are back after a five-year hiatus during which director Nicolas Winding Refn showed the world their merits by featuring Jewel’s work in his critically acclaimed movie Drive. The band has eschewed the gloss of their 2007 dark disco classic Night Drive for material that is still tightly constructed and very assured but isn’t afraid of its imperfections. It begins with a cover of Neil Young’s “Into the Black” which sets the tone for some incredibly macabre moments made all the more heavy by Ruth Radelet’s haunting vocals. At an hour and a half (scaled down from an alleged thirty-six tracks that the band composed) Kill For Love is almost epic for an electronic album, and weaves a peculiar and solemn beauty through its seventeen tracks. Within this moody context, slightly more hopeful offerings like the title track or “At The Door” glisten and radiate. The record as a whole makes the more lazily produced bedroom pop of the moment seem like the equivalent of a blank stare.

Liars – WIXIW: Liars are well known for exploring spaces and ideas which other bands fear to broach, and in the past that experimentation has manifested itself in layers of thunderous drums, menacing riffs, and hair-raising incantations or equally chilling falsetto. Their sixth studio release, WIXIW (pronounced “Wish You”) is more measured and reserved. The layers are there but they’re more delicate and subtle, taking time to unfurl and mature. Pegged pretty accurately as the band’s foray into electronic music, WIXIW still concerns itself with motifs the band has explored for ten years now, but approaches them from a completely different angle. It’s refreshing not just within Liars’ oeuvre, but against most any album with similar sonic aim. WIXIW proves that electronic production shouldn’t be written off by fans of more traditional music making; in hands so well versed in heavier-hitting rock, the outcome transcends mere curiosity and becomes something astonishing unto itself.

 

SHOW REVIEW: Liars w/ Oneohtrix Point Never

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Liars take the stage at Webster Hall

If I had to make a shortlist of the best bands ever, Liars would probably be on it. Perfect ratios art, myth, experimentalism, talent, and persona have made this one of the most prolific bands of my formative years – perhaps not critically, but definitely in a personal sense. Until last Tuesday, I’d never seen them live. But when I heard they were playing Webster Hall I decided to put aside my hatred for this awful venue and buy tickets immediately. No way would I miss this.

That night was one of the hottest of the summer so far. I was certainly not looking forward to standing in a mass of seething Liars fans in a poorly air-conditioned concert hall while we all moshed around, but life’s about trade-offs. The first hurdle I had to get over were the opening bands. I caught about ten seconds of Bubbles, but opted to stand in front of a fan near the entrance to cool off a bit before venturing back upstairs to get in place for a show I hoped would be just the right amount of epic. This also required enduring a set from Oneohtrix Point Never, which was torture enough.

If you’ve ever looked at a photograph of Daniel Lopatin while listening to his glitchy, undulating experimental electronic collages, you’ve basically seen the equivalent of his live “show”. It was one of the most boring things I’ve ever witnessed on a stage. Granted, I am not much of a Oneohtrix fan. I like parts of his music well enough, but the stutters and wails of electronic fuzz get to me after awhile and I start wishing it was just the pretty parts. Not surprisingly, that notion climbs tenfold when you’re super hot and you’re standing around in a huge concert hall with the amps turned way up and there’s really nothing to see him doing. I’ve been to a lot of electronic shows. The best DJs and producers and beatsmiths are actually a joy to see at work, deftly twisting knobs and noodling on synths and maybe even singing or drumming. Most of the others realize they are boring to watch at work but for the sake of being able to play out employ backup dancers or projections, which is always appreciated. Even if the performer is a little stiff, usually you can at least dance to the music and ignore the fact that someone is on stage “playing” something. But none of these things apply to Daniel Lopatin. We amused ourselves with the concept that at parties he only refers to himself in the third person (as his band) and says things like “Oneohtrix Point Never changes facial expressions” or “Oneohtrix Point Never gonna sound like real songs” or “Oneohtrix Point Never playing Webster Hall again”.

People hail this guy as a genius, which I don’t understand, especially when there are far less hyped folks who go totally unnoticed and actually care if they appear completely uninteresting in a live setting. Maybe it’s the hype that makes his nonchalance seem downright smug, but either way, the impression given is that his live set doesn’t have to be engaging because he is just that brilliant, and we should want to pay money to bask in his glory. If I had paid money to see Oneohtrix I would have demanded it back. I might see Lopatin’s side project with Joel Ford (creatively titled Ford & Lopatin) but I haven’t really noticed them touring and I’m sure he doesn’t do much there either, besides what I’m doing now, which is sitting in front of a laptop pushing buttons. My hope would be that Ford is an engaging enough performer for the both of them. Meaning he would have pretty spastic and/or wearing an insane costume.

Luckily the intensity and showmanship exemplified by Liars redeemed all of this as the lush opening bars of “Exact Color of Doubt” swirled over the audience. The vibes were appropriately creepy, with a sinister Angus Andrews moaning “I’ll always be your friend/I’ll never let you down” into the mic. Julian Gross took his place behind the drums and waited patiently for the mood to steep, with well-timed bursts on an electronic hybrid kit, while Aaron Hemphill temporarily ignored his own, smaller drum set as well as his guitar, presiding instead over a collection of synths. Throughout the set he would play each in turn, sometimes sharing with Andrews. “Exact Color of Doubt” expanded into the cavernous space almost like a meditation, but it was the last quiet moment in a show so loud I could feel the floor shaking and my arm hairs vibrating. They blasted straight into “Octagon” rendered with far heavier strokes in its live setting than it is on WIXIW, the band’s sixth studio album.

Much of the material on their newest record was showcased here, but it blended seamlessly into older tracks from their previous albums. The trajectory of Liars has been notoriously hard to pin down, with each album set apart from the others by its own theme, either sonically or conceptually. WIXIW has already been labeled the band’s “electronic” album and it’s true that they’ve used it to introduce a very timely exploration of computer and synth generated sounds. But the innate weirdness, sinister sensibilities, and fearless experimentation that mark all of Liars’ releases is just as prominent, even if the finished product is one of the more reserved pieces they’ve put out to date.

If anyone was worried that the more subtle tones of the new record would inform this latest tour, that worry was shattered not only by the sheer volume radiating from the stage, but also by the energy exhibited in particular by Angus Andrews. He’s every bit the cult leader, his limbs raised fantastically above his stringy locks, never removing his black jacket despite the unrelenting heat, said jacket looking almost too small on his menacing, gangly frame. One moment he would shudder violently, the next bouncing or twirling like a mental patient gone off his meds.

While the set was definitely skewed toward the songs on WIXIW, they were offered alongside a well-curated selection from their previous records. As such, the show acted partly as revue, partly as history lesson – spanning from Liars’ emergence as dance-punk purveyors of ten years past, through art rock witchiness, percussive experimentation, forays into shoegaze, and finally the punishing, barren soundscapes of 2009’s Sisterworld. And while these selections were a treat to a longtime Liars fan like myself, the WIXIW songs were executed so well that they held their own in the cannon of favorites like “Broken Witch” “Let’s Not Wrestle Mt Heart Attack” and “Plaster Casts of Everything”. Though Andrews has said that it was unnerving to present partially formed ideas and arrangements to the band during WIXIW’s almost claustrophobic writing and recording process, none of that insecurity shows now that the album is making its live debut. It’s hard to believe a decade has passed since the release of They Threw Us In A Trench And Stuck A Monument On Top, and indeed I feel like I’ve spent most of my adulthood in the locked groove of “This Dust Makes That Mud”. But the Liars are nothing if not uncanny for their ability to evolve and to challenge, and the show at Webster Hall was a perfect affirmation of such.

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