Liars can occasionally be mistaken for an experimental band when you listen to their records. But seen live there's no mistaking that they're a great rock band of a really traditional sort, even when they're performing not-very-traditional rock songs. They bring an instrument-walloping, body-tossing intensity to their gigs, the kind of abandon that makes it hard to just sit back and check your Twitter feed. Even when the rhythms get delicate and the guitars get dreamy, when the music turns more art-rock than art-punk, there's a certain slightly mocking theatrical grandeur to the band's delivery. They understand that an audience, who could just as easily be listening to this spacey stuff while sacked out on the couch at home, needs to be entertained.
Live at Sheperds Bush Empire is a decent if slightly compromised approximation of the Liars-in-concert experience. The minus side is that there's some energy invariably lost when you can't see frontman Angus Andrew bounding across the stage like a lanky shaman and so on. The plus side is that you can still hear the band attacking their songs with an intensity you get only intermittently on their albums. Liars' always shroud their records in a layer of grotty industrial ambiance, and so it's not surprising that Shepherds Bush doesn't actually sound all that different, fidelity-wise, from your standard Liars studio release. What's different is that, faced with a roomful of bodies, Liars can't (or won't) pull their punches. Here we get Liars the avant-garage band, turning murky Krautrock-inspired jams into tribal sing-alongs ("Proud Evolution") or playing with the joyful fury of a basement-show punk band ("The Overachievers"). "Fun" isn't a word that crops up when discussing a band as into eeriness and discomfort as Liars, but this is about as fun (you know, like a rock record) as their records are likely to get, a punchy memento for fans between tours.
Half of the Proud Evolution EP-- the title track, a Thom Yorke remix, and a live take-- will be a non-issue for anyone who owns Sisterworld, the Sisterworld Reinterpretations remix album, and/or Live at Shepherds Bush. The new half showcases what Liars do best offstage: 21st century post-punk that's all hypnotic rhythm, goosebump-inducing noise, and Andrew's unnerving vocals, which alternate between pained moaning and even more pained keening. It's drifting, droning, dark stuff, much better suited to a 2 a.m. bedroom listening than a cramped club. There's always been a goth side to Liars-- you thought it was an accident there are live covers of the band doing Bauhaus on YouTube?-- but here they crank it to the max. Except this is goth with any campy hysteria stripped away until all that's left is an insistent, unshakable sense of dread. Plenty of bands make music for your Halloween party. Liars are one of the few you'd want to invite to an actual exorcism.
