- CLASSIC ALBUM OF THE WEEK
- Liars "Drum's Not Dead" 2006 (USA)
- The monthly special for February looks back on the decade just past, and in my opinion the single best year for releases during that time may have been 2006 -- Scott Walker came out of seclusion to release The Drift, which is the best album he's ever made and also gets my vote as the best album of the entire decade. But close runners up for best of the decade would be two Liars albums, including this week's selection from the same year. Liars began as a "neo no wave" band in Brooklyn at the beginning of the decade, but by the time of their second album (They Were Wrong So We Drowned) their music became a sonic adventure that's hard to describe. This, their third album, was yet another radical departure -- the album revolves around a highly abstract but emotional conflict between two characters called Drum and Mt. Heart Attack, which seem to represent some sort of metaphor along the lines of "drum=vitality=life / heart attack=anxiety=death". But perhaps more important and original is the way the music is organized -- the drums truly are the lead intstrument on this record, playing the melodies and telling the stories, while the vocals and guitars recede into the background like so much ambience. Unfortunately their most recent album from 2007 was a bit of a reversion to the relatively straight souped-up indie rock of their earliest days, but who knows what they'll do next?
- Here's the music video for the lovely melodic song that ends this album: "The Other Side Of Mt. Heart Attack". And here's a weird one from the Drowned album, "There's Always Room On The Broom". Their most recent album was simply called Liars from 2007, and includes the creepy song "Plaster Casts of Everything". Finally here's the original line-up playing a classic rocker from their "no wave" debut album, "Mr. You're On Fire Mr.".