After over two decades of exploration through a myriad of musical realms, Liars have reached the pinnacle of their creative output with their 10th album, The Apple Drop. The group - now consisting of original founder Angus Andrew, jazz drummer Laurence Pike, multi-instrumentalist Cameron Deyell, and lyricist Mary Pearson Andrew - have soldered, fused, and spliced different musical elements together to construct an unprecedented beast of an LP. Drums are big, expansive and rock-centric, forming a solid backbone that runs throughout the body of the album and upholding the weight of the endless experimentalism that’s layered above: from abstract electronics and distorted guitars, to harps and vocal effects. The Apple Drop is the embodiment of a personal journey for Andrew which saw him, for the first time, choosing to reflect back on his life and mental health. The result is an album of contrasting emotions; some songs grapple with nihilism and depression whilst others are uplifting and look optimistically into the future. As the frontman himself explains, “The album’s key idea is swallowing your fears, or coming to terms with them”.
Amongst the darker, more brooding songs on the record are innumerable moments of curiosity and intrigue. Slow and Turn Inward unfolds in a fantasy atmosphere of harps and chimes that resonate around you. With trebly electric guitar and rattlesnake shakers, you feel as if you’ve awoken in a strange and remote town in the Old West. The idea of the album as a personal journey for Andrew is palpable; this is music that shifts you into different worlds. You can feel the essence of adventure and exploration as this album moves through you. As Andrew explains, “Momentum and revolution were themes I wanted to explore, to give the listener this sense of transformation and to feel like you were being transported through the wormhole”.
In Big Appetite you fall into some black, subterranean space. It’s a meaty alt-rock track that kicks your door down with snapping snares, explosive drums, and guitar that’s perfectly balanced between Johnny Marr-esque cleanness and grizzly distortion. The song’s elements echo around you, yet nothing collides or gets muddled up in the madness. Andrew’s voice is exquisite. Across the LP it shape-shifts convincingly into an array of different styles. Soft, sustained high notes flow throughout some songs; on others we get bellowing, powerful sequences that diminish into talkative ramblings. Liars often contrast tranquility with mosh-pit primed grunge on The Apple Drop. In the last bars of Big Appetite, chaos breaks out. The bass thunders down in pitch in destructive cycles and cracks the earth in two. Acid Crop opens with the warm fuzz of synth and fingerpicked guitar, but later descends into the mother of all drops, replete with noisy cymbal washes that reverberate around your skull.
The gloomiest track on the record is also the most avant-garde. In New Planets New Undoings, you're suspended in a topsy-turvy limbo. All of the band is there, but deconstructed into its separate components and inverted in a fascinating way. Vocals are doused in surreal effects; they transform in texture, and sound as if they've been submerged underwater. The dead-end saloon in Liars’ Old Western town sinks into a strange realm. Piano notes blurt out unpredictably as if the instrument's being broken apart. The key to Liars’ innovation may lie in their reluctance to completely understand how instruments, technologies and techniques are “supposed” to work. As Andrews explains, “I’m afraid to learn anything too much… I’ve relied on this idea that instinct is much better than contemplation in regard to creativity”.
Depression and destruction on the album are counterbalanced by songs imbued with purpose, hope and optimism. As Luke Turner (The Guardian) explains, Andrews’ “creative process was no longer about sinking ships, but diving deep within himself to revisit them, letting Liars’ past influence the present.” Eager to make the shift away from SSRI’s (antidepressants), Andrews began taking psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, which enabled him to self-reflect constructively. The positives of this shift can be felt through the major key of songs like From What The Never Was; backed by easy-going acoustic guitar strokes, it's music that feels perfect for a relaxed summer afternoon.
Star Search creates the sensation of a spiritual ascension. It’s a truly genre-defying song with heavenly chords sustained on multiple organs, synths, and keyboards, and ending with call and response vocals that make the tune feel more inviting and accessible than Liars’ previous releases. The song's final lyrics, “You can forget your job / You can forget your life / You're gonna be a star / That's all you ever are”, are doubly inspiring when applied to Andrew’s context; they remind us that despite difficult periods in life, an ambition for a better future can always prevail.
Tracklist:
1. The Start
2. Slow and Turn Inward
3. Sekwar
4. Big Appetite
5. From What the Never Was
6. Star Search
7. My Pulse to Ponder
8. Leisure War
9. King of the Crooks
10. Acid Crop
11. New Planet New Undoings
[Released: 06.08.21 on Mute Records]
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