Liars
Mess
Mute Records
Street: 03.24
Liars = Health + Trust
Mess is a world away from Liars when we first heard them at the turn of the century. It picks up where “Brats” on WIXIW left off—dark, noisy EDM as played by a band that doesn’t care about EDM conventions. Like their first record, They Threw Us All In A Trench And Stuck A Monument On Top, Liars eschew genre and their own traditions to create subversive, anti-pop dance punk. This time, though, they’re working from within the machine, using conventional EDM tools, sounds and beats and smashing them together into something unmistakably theirs. Their drum worship of Drum’s Not Dead is obvious in “Pro Anti-Anti” and “Boyzone,” while “Mess On A Mission” and “Perpetual Village” take a Trench approach to Sisterworld’s alternate dimensions. The band is now adept in the electronic manipulation they flirted with in WIXIW. Mess moves beyond the yearning of WIXIW and offers an alternative—a cheerfully dark counter to tradition and the world at large. –Cody Kirkland