Talking on the phone, Angus Andrew sounds like an author. The lanky singer for the experimental art-noise band Liars is terrifically eloquent, but it’s not just the way he talks—Andrew thinks like an author, too. He’s much more willing to discuss the thematic constructs and narrative bones of his music than time signatures or chord changes. He has never published a novel, but he talks about Liars’ albums as if they’re his books—more vehicles for ideas than collections of songs. And if their albums are books, then this year’s Sisterworld is his take on the post-modern great American novel.
“The impetus [of Sisterworld] really is acknowledging a sense of dissatisfaction or isolation and then offering the idea of what you could do about it,” Andrew explained.
He draws inspiration from literary figures like Bret Easton Ellis, even alluding to the film adaptation of Ellis’ “American Psycho” in the video for “The Overachievers.” His characters are hollow and miserable, walking on eggshells so as not to upset the natural occurrence of their lives until they liberate themselves the only way they know how—they explode.
But Liars are not the only band from California that draws direct influence from Ellis’ work. Groups like Girls and Ariel Pink also address the forgotten youth and impoverished dregs of the Golden State, but dress them up in hopeful rays of beach pop and chillwave. It’s an appealing aesthetic, but one that Andrew can’t quite stomach.
“The idea that we wanted to deal with is the sense that we don’t really connect with a lot of the music we hear coming out,” Andrew said. “I think it’s frustrating for us because there’s a lot of work being done that is in a way glassing over what I think are the real sort of meaty issues.”
This dichotomy in Cali-deranged music is symptomatic of complex topics writ large, though. The larger, more involved a topic is, the more angles there are to construe. And thus it is to Liars’ credit that their Sisterworld Remixes album was such a success. The bonus disc is a song-by-song reworking of Sisterworld by artists hand-picked by the band, and the results were everything Andrew hoped for, if only because they were nothing he could have expected.
“Just on a very personal, sort of subjective level, it’s a complete mindfuck to give someone a song that you’ve written quite specifically about something and have a certain mood to it, and to get that song back reinterpreted in a way that you never would have imagined … It’s a really interesting way of exemplifying how people can view the same thing in a completely different way,” Andrew said.
Most of those new views can be described in one descriptor that Liars will never fit: subdued. The tension becomes morose, the catharsis becomes sheer bliss. It is nothing you can expect at a Liars live show. Andrew’s sprawling presence writhes in the chaos of the band’s own creation. They manifest the inhuman harshness of a broken world in very human form, embracing the fractured insanity of their notoriously disparate albums.
The threesome are constantly challenging themselves, and their discography might be the best evidence of an eager, if not altogether, ADD group. Ranging from noise to pop-punk to art-rock, Liars seemingly create a new culture or atmosphere for the purpose of each album.
“I think in some ways we’re known for making some very stylistic jumps,” Andrew said.
But that’s to confuse an album’s theme for a narrator’s voice.
“It’s interesting when you’re able to put songs together from different records to show how there’s been a sort of constant line between things that people didn’t see before,” Andrew said.
Same message, different story. Liars’ live show is just another novel you need to read for yourself.