Sadistic is the only way to describe it-- a conscious effort toward slapping away all the little hands clamoring for more of They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top's antagonistic punk-funk. After winning enough early praise to make most lesser bands blush and acquiesce to the demands of a fanbase craving more of the same, Liars hinted that they were not in the business of catering to expectations. You want the battery (acid)-powered post-punk that drove all the Williamsburg hipsters wild in 2001? You want the brittle aggression of their debut? Well, you'll get wind-up toy funeral dirges and oblique, numbing sound collages, and you'll like it! ...Or leave it. It seems Liars don't much care either way.
Liars know why their debut won them instant acclaim. It's no accident that They Were Wrong So We Drowned bears so little resemblance to their debut. Circumstance plays a part-- the old want-ad rhythm section hightailed it prior to recording, leaving longtime associate Julian Gross to take over on drums-- but more importantly, to Liars, they've beaten dance-punk at its own game and are ready to move on. So maybe masochism is a better way to describe what's going on here-- what else could cause a band to willfully alienate their supporters? Independent music isn't exactly the easiest racket in town, after all, even if you're blessed with almost instant celebrity (relatively speaking). But to walk away from your clearest, most accessible shot at success, to dare any fairweather trend-riders to keep listening after the wave has crested-- well, you have to be more than ready for a backlash; you need to want to savor it.
If I'm treating a lukewarm reception for this album among Liars fans as a foregone conclusion, forgive me; the fact is, We Were Wrong is such an entirely different creature than They Threw Us All in a Trench that I envision widespread strife caused by its polarizing force, street-team members fighting turf wars, brother against brother. I envision the faithful losing faith, while simultaneously, former detractors, uh, tracting by the dozens in response to such a reversal. Older tracks like "Everyday Is a Child with Teeth" only hint at the screeching atonality, or the formlessness, of "If You're a Wizard, Then Why Do You Wear Glasses", or the overwhelming boredom of "Read the Book That Wrote Itself". These tracks aren't so much unwelcome as they are completely, utterly baffling in context. Nothing Liars have done in the past will provide listeners with an adequate transition to these anti-songs.
For better or worse, though, nebulous, arrhythmic atmospherics comprise a significant portion of the album. When Liars remove the formal structure of songs and descend into carnival experimentalism, they do so not with the precision of intent, but with a punk vibe-- the sound of people attacking instruments with a desire to play that far outstrips any overt talent. Though the band has challenged listeners with this album, their intent doesn't seem as much like a desire to overtly alienate their audience as to embrace their artistic freedom.
Contrary to what some have claimed, They Were Wrong is listenable, and intentionally so: the band frequently finds ways to successfully straddle the fence between form and noise ("They Don't Want Your Corn They Want Your Kids", and the brain-stealing chant of "Broken Witch", among others), though most of the time, it's admittedly impenetrable and alienating. I'll be honest: I count myself among those turned off by the shift of focus. But isn't Liars' obvious intention not to pander to their fans' expectations-- even when it results in abrasive, half-formed lab disasters-- deserving of respect? Even laudable?
They can be commended, to a degree, but "there's no talent to obscurity" as your old pal Chris Ott once said; when it comes to music, it's not hard to not be popular. A lot of this experimentation is simply in the name of narrative-- a rumination on the nature of witchcraft and the sordid politics surrounding the Salem witch trials-- which makes the decision to show preference to such intensely esoteric structures even more questionable. Although a little S&M; makes a good backdrop for the twisted subject matter of black magick and bedevilment, etc., Angus Andrews' vocals and lyrics are, as a constant, a complete non-factor. As such, the "concept" isn't any more apparent than the songwriting, conveying more in mood and implication than any substance. So as it stands, Liars mostly abandon their jittery dance blasts to highly mixed effect, to tell a tale that just gets lost in their deep, dark woods.
But they don't even totally see that through-- the album is undercut, so to speak, by two songs capable of going toe-to-toe with anything Liars have done to date. "We Fenced Other Houses with the Bones of Our Own" is nothing but nervous electronics and the steady, dooming pulse of a bass drum counting down the moments until "kingdom come" amidst a steady chant that echoes the numbing opening verse of "Grown Men Don't Just Fall in the River, Just Like That", before sliding cleanly into "They Don't Want Your Corn". It only paves the way for the eventual, epic assault of "Hold Hands and It Will Happen Anyway"; as the denouement to this story arc, the ritual concludes, the Earth splits, cracks, and erupts with hellfire and the rotten scent of sulfur as, for one brief moment, Liars summon up some of the (immensely entertaining) demons that infested their first album. The remarkable cacophony is fantastic as a stand-alone song, and does its part to bolster the minor sense of story, but only weakens the album as a whole by confronting its flaws head-on. In the end, the flash-in-the-pan excellence of that track sums up They Were Wrong perfectly: An entire album of exposition is not justified by one moment of revelation, but if nothing else, I can respect their intentions.
