Yahoo! Music Review

Gig played on 04/11/07

It is officially the scariest day of the year as strange noises and random explosions ring out in Brighton, set off by darkened, cloaked figures. None of this is actually happening on the street though. It's bonfire night but the plastic witches, ghosts and ghouls are locked out of the Barfly's underground cavern, engaged in the kind of inane tomfoolery this city displays at the sight of every full moon, if not every weekend. Down a flight of stairs and into the gloom stand Liars, their imposing, deliciously frayed frontman Angus Andrew imploring us to take his hand amid the maelstrom.

"Let's freak-out people. Let's take it!" he roars, waves of greasy hair running down to his shoulders and a full length white suit. As this rabidly exciting New York City four-piece get set to lock into another hell groove, we're just two songs down and it's already clear resistance from these wolves is both useless and unnecessary. Twenty four hours after apparently leaving London for dead, this blocky club, with its low ceilings, awkward design and straining sound system, is the perfect venue for such an impressively disturbed band.

Fresh from the release of their self-titled new record and Liars clearly have to be seen live. They also seem keen to turn the weirdo-meter down a notch, perhaps having concluded there is only so much mileage in macabre death and witch-hunts. So, from a straight-jacketed and drooling 11 to a cross-eyed approaching psycho nine, we run the gamut of the new recordings and percussion-crazed predecessor "Drums Not Dead". But the key here remains beats, as Julian Gross pummels out tribal rhythms, death rhythms and, even, baggy rhythms, smeared in sound and Andrew's raging incantations, like a young Nick Cave, all weird magic and mad confusion.

Liars take obvious influence from Krautrock legends Can, particularly with "Drum And The Uncomfortable Can"'s squalling abduction, but also the recurring power pulse that runs throughout tonight's claustrophobic show. With "Freak Out" and "Pure Unevil" they recall The Velvet Underground gloriously reborn alongside the Animal Collective in a heroin-addicted nihilistic supergroup, all rusty, blunt guitars and smacked-out vocals. And while "Houseclouds"' shuffle and bleep offers room to breath, intensity and danger is always close, as the cutely-titled "We Fenced Other Gardens With The Bones Of Our Own" quickly proves.

The nagging suspicion that Liars are a self-destructive art-punk prank, unable to reign in their wilful minds, does still remain in 2007. Tonight, career high-point "The Other Side Of Mt. Heart Attack" shows exactly that, as the Jesus & Mary Chain meets Phil Spector unfolding glory is played semi-comatose, like a bunch of junkies. Seconds later, however, and they're exploding though "Plaster Casts Of Everything", like the most ferocious and fantastic act on the planet. Above ground as sparklers sparkle and someone says boo to a goose, it seems Lucifer's house band are actually right before our eyes.

by Ben Gilbert