Liars @ The Tea Room

Anyone that wasn't part of the sizeable crowd that attended the Liars show at the Tea Room on Saturday night missed what was easily one of the best shows so far this year in the Metroplex. And although I can't say that I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, I should say that as much as I like all of the Liars recorded material, I had never seen them live before Saturday and honestly didn't know what to expect. Bands like Liars that play rather non-traditional and noise driven rock music are usually completely hit or miss in a live setting for me, and I would guess that most people reading this would probably agree, no matter how much they enjoy talking about music that is "too difficult" for most people to "get."

The thing that stands out to me the most about Liars' music, and their new material in particular, is how much they are able to do with so little. Their music is all about rhythm, repetition and space, and although they are probably one of those bands that Sudgefan fans enjoy pointing to with their "too pretentious" flags at full mast, I would say that those basic elements are probably more in line with primitive American blues and rock n' roll than most of the commercially viable "new rock" that we would hear all the time if we actually listened to rock radio anymore. At the end of the day, Liars obviously don't sound anything like traditional blues based rock, but they do seem to tap into some of the same things, and in some way, appeal to listeners on a similarly basic level, albeit with extraordinarily different results. Take any song on Drums Not Dead, for instance. Pretty much all of them feature a pounding rhythm as a centerpiece (hence the album title I suppose) with minimal tones of distorted and nervous noise buzzing around in the immediate background, and patches of mantra-like vocals thrown in to sort of tie the songs together when they are about to come undone. The driving force behind all of them, to me, is the silent space that exists in between all of these elements. The emptiness creates a good deal of anticipation for what is coming next, and it is the use of space that seems to keep Liars' songs unpredictable and somewhat chaotic, even if most of them are in fact built on extremely simple and often repetitious sounds. Basically, it seems that they are able to strip rock music to absolute bare essentials and still create songs that don't really sound like anything else, especially rock n roll.

The live show captured these qualities, I think, but more importantly: it was just fun to watch. Angus is a pretty charismatic frontman, and seemed much cooler and more easy going on stage than I would have imagined. The band played several songs from the new record, as well as one or two old ones thrown in here and there, and a bunch of stuff I hadn't heard before (which I assume is new, although I could be wrong). Everything seemed to work quite well for them on stage, and the live drumming was completely captivating throughout. The sound probably could have been louder at times, but given the band's somewhat unusual setup, I would have to say that the sound was about as good as it could be, and certainly didn't take away from the show in any way. And by the way, they closed the show with a rather strange and completely kick ass cover of Nirvana's "Territorial Pissings" that really seemed to serve as a good example of why Liars are so compelling (as well as one of the night's highlights). Their music might be hard to swallow at first, but its obvious that they know why people listen to rock music, and they are clearly able to utilize that knowledge to create songs that are challenging and different but never boring or overly academic, which might be explained by simply saying that they never seem to do more than they have to. And you don't have to be a hipster, a record collection asshole or a wanna be music journalist to appreciate that.