Post post-punk, new New Wave, neo-No Wave — take your pick, all or any are suitable starting points for wrapping your head around the Liars’ 2001 epileptic dance party of a debut, They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top: CB radio vocals, guitars like a chain saw falling down a flight of stairs, gonad-vibrating bass, shitastic synth squiggles and a springloaded snare drum splatter. Nine years and four albums later, the new Sisterworld continues to up the ante. Led by 6-foot-6-inch Aussie ex-pat Angus Andrew, the Liars are part and parcel of a posse of new-school cultural grave robbers disinterring the over-caffeinated, barbed-wire archness as once practiced by the likes of the Fall, Gang of Four and Wire–and thank God for it. Word on the live show has that Andrew uses his impressive wing span to slap, tickle, body slam and, when necessary, conk his bandmates’ heads together like coconuts, all in the service of creating a more perfect anarchy in the U.S.A. — some falling down included. The Liars play the First Unitarian Church on Friday, and to celebrate, Mute Records is giving away a two-disc deluxe edition of Sisterworld along with the band’s entire back catalog — Liars, Mt. Heart Attack, Drums Not Dead and They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top — to the first reader to email us at FEED@PHAWKER.COM with the subject line PANTS ON FIRE (include your phone number and mailing address.) You lucky ducks!
RELATED: When in Rome, sack it. That’s been Liars’ m.o., whether arting up Brooklyn post-punk with witchy concepts or conquering German abstraction in Berlin. The globe-trotting trio’s fifth album is a total Los Angeles record, but not the Tom Petty, good-vibes kind. Sisterworld veers between frenzy and foreboding, exploring the City of Angels’ demonic side, from Charles Manson to Bret Easton Ellis…MORE