We Should Nail Their Thoughts To The Wall

Liars “Scarecrows On A Killer Slant”

There are a lot of guitar parts on Liars’ Sisterworld that are genuinely frightening and startling. The band have not reinvented the wheel — their parts lift from horror soundtracks, hardcore punk, art rock — but they’ve mastered the textures and dynamics, resulting in amazingly vivid and visceral music. “Scarecrows On A Killer Slant,” the album’s centerpiece, is bleak and extremely violent. It sounds like you’re being chased down by maniacs, adrenaline pumping in fight-or-flight survivalist mode. Or it could be that you’re the predator stalking the prey. In the middle of the track, the violent fantasy kicks in: We should punish the creeps! Drag them out in the street and kill them! Retribution! When the chorus kicks in again, it’s even more deranged, and it’s hard to tell the difference between random violence and street justice. It’s just this bloodthirsty cycle of power and aggression. The song seems to burn itself out, collapsing into a wreck of smoking rubble at the end. The rage dies down, but doesn’t go away.

Buy it from Amazon. Here is my feature-length interview with Liars on Pitchfork.