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When Liars emerged in 2001 with their scorching debut LP They Threw Us In A Trench And Stuck A Monument On Top, it was a caustic wad of spit in the mascaraed eyeball of everything trendy, vapid and annoying about hipster New York City in the turn of the century.
They came from Australia like the bastard sons of The Birthday Party, armed with a raw, experimental swagger that was the complete antithesis to the posturing of groups like The Strokes, Longwave and Interpol. But subsequent releases that followed Trench failed to catch the same fire, and save for the elite few who stuck by them for the ride through their strange witch trial concept piece They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, 2006’s tempermental Drums Not Dead, their caustic, Amp-Rep evoking eponymous fourth LP from 2007 and 2010’s off-kilter Sisterworld.
But if you are one of those folks who’ve sat out on the sidelines of Liars’ energy field these last ten years, WIXIW is the right time to tune them back into your frequency. Pronounced "Wish You", these 11 new songs find the trio of Angus Andrew, Julian Gross and Aaron Hemphill taking their boldest creative leap as a band yet, one that dials back the intensity of their previous material in favor of a more nuanced, electronically driven tone that pulls from the esoteric aspects of their longtime imprint Mute Records. Perhaps you can blame it on the LP’s producer, Mute founder and CEO Daniel Miller, for the throwback vibe of WIXIW. However, you cannot deny that the inspiration integration of such early label luminaries as Wire’s Bruce Gilbert, Fad Gadget and even Miller’s own act The Normal has harbored a resounding effect on the skittering rhythms and textured treatments of such highlights as "Flood to Flood", "The Exact Colour of Doubt" and "Ill Valley Prodigies".
With WIXIW, Liars not only reveal their finest work yet, but also cement their stature as one of the true mavericks of modern art rock who still don’t need a scene to prove how cool they are.
