In typically font-defying fashion, LIARS' new single is called "We Fenced Other Gardens With The Bones Of Our Own" and if the title wasn't already cannibalistic and scary enough for you, just wait 'til you hear the bloodied, unholy racket that emanates from it.
Make no mistake, "We Fenced Other Gardens..." is one of the fucking weirdest singles you'll hear this or any other year, and the newly-stripped down Liars are clearly diving down into their deepest, most exotic waters yet.
Indeed, it's no surprise that Liars' frontman Angus Andrew seems to have taken to wearing a tiger tail at recent gigs, as "We Fenced Other Gardens..." is a lumpen, slowed-down animalistic ritual chant with magickal overtones. Within it, Andrew sounds like a cross between a chanting Gregorian monk and Robert De Niro's uber-obsessive stalker character in "Cape Fear" and the haunted end results find the drums sounding like oil containers damped to glory and the ratchety guitar oppressively snicking at your synapses.
It's horrible, but totally captivating, coming over like The Pop Group after a truckload of downers before reaching the suitably spooked chorus of "Fly Fly, the devil's in your eye - shoot shoot!" . The answering voice appears to urge "we're doomed!" and the spirit of Dad's Army's Private Frazer lives on. After it, you're drained and nonplussed but crucially DO want to play it again.
Besides, it's as commercial as feck compared to its' B-sides. Your reviewer thrilled when he saw there was a cover of The Germs' "Sex Boy" on here, but then he didn't expect it to sound like it was recorded live in a damp warehouse on an acid-soaked walkman probably last used (with the same batteries) in 1986. Actually it sounds a bit like Throbbing Gristle's "We Hate You (Little Girls)", which may or may not be a compliment depending on your standpoint. Whatever, it's surely the sound of deceased Germs vocalist Darby Crash turning in his grave.
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Then, when you're already terrorised, Liars go all ambient on us. Well, sort of anyway, in the shape of "The Fountain And It's Monologue", wherein a ominous drone grifts at glacial non-speed in a fashion more akin to Tangerine Dream's spaced prog epic "Zeit" from 1972 than anything else current, though I suppose the likes of Labradford also spring to mind.
There are also the videos for the songs thrown in, but my grumpy laptop won't accomodate me with these treasures at present. If the cover artwork's anything to go by, though, these may well be wintry, black-hearted slices of art liable to confuse you even further.
"We Fenced Other Gardens With The Bones Of Our Own" exhumes a plot where those long gone lie anything but quietly. Liars are summoning the strangest, most unwholesome of sonic spirits and the faint-hearted had better damn well run screaming.
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