The Liars - Drum's Not Dead (2006)

The DVD with it, which I initially assumed to contain videos for three different songs, actually contains three different videos for the entire album!

Is Dadaismus here? I really think he'd love this!

I do kinda appreciate that they made room for prettiness on this one. The last track is real sweet.

Haven't watched the movies yet.

-- inert false cat (enemy.airshi...), February 16th, 2006 12:20 AM.

yes

Second of all, if I had posted as Mark W, I highly doubt you would have chosen to frame that mocking as some kind of girly musical/cultural squeamishness based on ignorance and fear of the strange.

With both of those things said, I dislike the album because I think it's boring and unadventurous. It sounds joyless and monotonous and uninspired, as if they bored even themselves to death while making it. The drumming and beats aren't actually all that unusual or interesting, the songs themselves lack dynamics of any kind, continuing in the same groove like a dull saw hacking at my brain. The vocals are lethargic and entirely grating, as are the harmonics and melodies. I'm just not sure what, if anything, I'm supposed to be taking away from this album. It's like a frictionless surface. I can't hold on to anything about it when it's done, nor do I particularly want to. It's all, "Yay! Drums and feedback and chanting exist!" Oh yeah? Then do something with them. Like yeah, all of that can make for a fantastic album, but only if you're really willing to really take those things to interesting places and not play it safe like kindergarteners with safety scissors.

But hey, I'll just be sitting over here with my copy of Tago Mago instead, fearing the strange like the little girl that I am.

The female/male issue never crossed my mind. We usually don't post on the same threads (or at least not that I notice) so my recognition was a little slow based on the short posts you made. Lacking context, "This is really horrible" kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Knowing it's from someone who might actually be into this sort of thing adds some context and your post was great (frictionless? yeah!)

That said, Tago Mago is one of my favorite albums too.

Melissa's post reinforces that notion, sounds similar to my response to their last album. Who knows though, maybe I'll like this one.

Isn't this part of the point?

xpost

See, dudes, like Yoda says, there is no try, there is only do, and this squawky noise blast / nazi-porn-racism anti-music / Jim Goad drunk on Ivy League semiotics and bukkake—it's all try and no "do." And I know that that, supposedly, IS your point, but like, I mean, really—HOW IS THAT A POINT IN 2005 A.D.? It's not.

I feel like there's a bit of shared ground between that and what Melissa's saying. (A lot of divergence, too, though; Hopper seems anti-noise, Melissa just wants noise to be good.) And in a lot of cases, I think I agree with it -- or at least I think it points to a problem that certain parts of the current noise crop are struggling with. There's a big and useful emphasis on the "trying" part -- the breaking-down of things into a raw, fluid state. But then it's kind of an open question whether a band is actually going to build it back up into something different. When they do: sweet. When they don't ... well, a lot of times I have a similar reaction to Melissa's, which is that some bands here really expose how their sounds work -- they make public what it sounds like to be in a room right next to a drum kit, or what it sounds like to really break down sounds with your pedals. And, well, especially if you've done those things yourself, it's easy to get that reaction: "so?"

-- Cousin yogurt beard

Where did you hear this? There's nothing up on the Sonar site yet.

but since I can't argue for objectivity, it's hard to say that kind of stuff without feeling like I'm trolling someone :/