Liars – WIXIW

June 4, 2012 • Mute Records

I never know how to feel when a band I've been a fan of for a long time goes and changes their sound on me. Sometimes you just want more of the same thing; other times a fresh sound is long overdue. In Liars' case it's a bit of both—I liked their noisy, brash style of rock but at the same time Sisterworld didn't have a lot of staying power. WIXIW, strangely enough, manages to satisfy on both counts, even if it's not the best thing they've done.

This time around Liars is a lot more soft and dreamy, with subtle industrial and electronic undertones. It seems like they've gone with a much simpler approach than on the harsher and heavier Sisterworld. Almost entirely gone are the drums and guitars and any semblance of "normal" rock music; instead we get droning synthesizers, techno beats, strings, and of course the tribal drumming (some things never change, anyway). At most points it would be hard to recognize it as being Liars if one didn't know beforehand, at least if it weren't for the vocals and the occasional throwback melody (e.g. "Who Is the Hunter").

I'm really enjoying the stripped-down sound; it seems to allow Liars to create more effective moods—whiplashing from dreamy ambience to sinister churning in just the first two tracks—and it works pretty well. Although every track has a different instrumental makeup and tone, things seem to flow nicely enough and the album feels sonically cohesive and consistent.

However, it's painfully obvious that Liars aren't yet comfortable in their new skin. Despite feeling that the album holds together well, the individual songs aren't their best. Only about five tracks stood out to me as being particularly good, while the rest were simply not very memorable (though none were terrible). To be fair, that's about how most Liars albums stand with me as their music is usually pretty impenetrable, and on the whole I enjoy WIXIW in stride, even if I can't remember what it sounded like later. On the other hand this is easily the most accessible album of theirs I've heard yet (and I think I've heard all of them at one point or another), so who knows what that means.

So anyway, I suppose I'm enjoying this album, albeit in a mostly-superficial way and I highly doubt I'll ever consider it as good as Drum's Not Dead. Still, it's an interesting experiment and it will be neat to see where they take it in the future.

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