The Liars - Drum's Not Dead (2006)

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I agree with grimly fiendish. I always find this kind of experimental music easy to admire but hard to love, but I'm absolutely addicted to 'Drum's Not Dead'. Can't shake it. Awesome album that fully realises Liars' potential. Where they go next should be really interesting.

― yer mam! (yer mam!), Wednesday, 8 March 2006 18:42 (eighteen years ago) link

[...]they sound like a sort of rubbish version of Black Dice with a little bit of Animal Collective thrown in but without the impact of either band. Am I missing something here?
-- dog latin (doglati...), March 8th, 2006. (dog latin) (link)

No, you summed it up quite well. And no, there is nothing "experimental" about this. In fact, that's a part of the problem. It's just... such a nonentity.

― Turangalila (Salvador), Wednesday, 8 March 2006 18:46 (eighteen years ago) link

i heard "room on the broom" after it was recommended to me and it didn't move me. and i like noise and psychedelia and postpunk and all that stuff to bits. that said, i listened to the new one again and it's slowly growing on me. a little too early to tell i suppose, but i do wonder what all the fuss is about when we've already got bands like Black Dice and the Lowdown who do something very very similar. there are bits on this record that sound like they were lifted right out of "beaches and canyons" and others that sound like a post-hardcore "sung tongs".

i'll probably be back in a month gushing about how much i love this band, knowing me.

― dog latin (dog latin), Wednesday, 8 March 2006 19:13 (eighteen years ago) link

ha! just read the whole thread (should have before posting). People are very polarised by this record.

― dog latin (dog latin), Wednesday, 8 March 2006 19:47 (eighteen years ago) link

Oh, and am I the only one who noticed the section that sounds really similar to the Byrds "You Showed Me". I also noticed the "Softest Voice" similarity mentioned upthread. There's also also also a bit that sounds like it was lifted straight from the rolling wave sounds in "Endless Happiness" by Black Dice.

I reckon though that it's all gonna click and I'm gonna love this album one day.

― dog latin (dog latin), Wednesday, 8 March 2006 19:51 (eighteen years ago) link

Black Dice are too self-conciously "difficult" for me tbh
Animal Collective I just can't get past the vocals (ugh) or the... actually I'm not sure I can define it, but it doesn't work for me (though I admire & respect them in theory).

Liars are more like a happy medium to me and not 'difficult' to appreciate/enjoy at all!

I don't think this record fully delivers on it's promise as an album however (it's the "songs" mainly) but I'm glad I heard it, because they don't sound lazy, and DO sound like a band who could actually take rock forward to somewhere... and that's a bit of a rare quality right now.

― fandango (fandango), Wednesday, 8 March 2006 20:00 (eighteen years ago) link

funny, i think liars would be greatly improved if the guys had better singing voices. what do you not like about the AC vocals par-hasard?

― dog latin (dog latin), Wednesday, 8 March 2006 20:01 (eighteen years ago) link

I'm not sure.. but I think it's the same thing I dislike in whatever freak-folk! Is that an answer?

Maybe it seems like an attempt at primitivism or naivity that comes across incredibly mannered and inauthentic & deliberately "ooh weird & childish" about it all (yes I know there's rockism in there).

By contrast (to the music) the fairly average male rock guy voices of Liars come across as oddly refreshing!

I very much doubt I've heard enough of AC's ouvre to be certain about all this though.

― fandango (fandango), Wednesday, 8 March 2006 20:22 (eighteen years ago) link

AC's vocals are always different, though...I think they add an uncomfortable element to Feels, but the euphoric harmonizing is what stops Sung Tongs from being too experimental - the melody gives it a base...i feel the same with Drum's Not Dead...for instance, the melody of the last song ends the album on its highest note and leaves the listener feeling warm, but elsewhere (towards the albums end) its often too monotonous, which is how I felt about a lot of their last album (though that was hampered more by the muddy production)

― Space Is the Place (Space Is the Place), Wednesday, 8 March 2006 20:33 (eighteen years ago) link

yeh, AC vocals do sound pretty different from song to song.

― dog latin (dog latin), Wednesday, 8 March 2006 20:36 (eighteen years ago) link

I'm pretty much in agreement re: ST vs. Feels (much more awkward on a first impression) but I need to hear them both properly still.

― fandango (fandango), Wednesday, 8 March 2006 20:37 (eighteen years ago) link

the vocals on sung tongs are better than feels (which still sounds like mercury rev's singer), but it's down to taste. i really like the whole beach boys-go-apeshit vibe on ST.

― dog latin (dog latin), Wednesday, 8 March 2006 20:52 (eighteen years ago) link

life is a pigsty

― noizem duke (noize duke), Wednesday, 8 March 2006 20:55 (eighteen years ago) link

All these Animal Collective comparisons baffle me. Same w/ Black Dice.

Has anybody heard the new Young People? I'm really digging it right now, it's a sister to Drum's Not Dead — carefully plotted, spare, lots of tribal thrumping, creepy vibey. The two records sound GREAT back-to-back.

― Dr. Gene Scott (shinybeast), Wednesday, 22 March 2006 02:27 (eighteen years ago) link

I reckon Liars would sound better with higher production values. Sometimes I want the sounds to kick me in the face but they fall a bit flat.

― dog latin (dog latin), Wednesday, 22 March 2006 10:43 (eighteen years ago) link

I think they'd sound completely average & really normal with better production values. I love the production on this record, even if the record itself didn't leave as lasting an impression as I'd hoped.

― file under cozy techno (fandango), Wednesday, 22 March 2006 11:40 (eighteen years ago) link

never heard the last one but listening to the Other Music samples now and there's a definate This Heat vibe going on...minus the prog drumming though. Sounds really good.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Thursday, 23 March 2006 19:17 (eighteen years ago) link

Dan, last one even more so

― Dominique (dleone), Thursday, 23 March 2006 19:45 (eighteen years ago) link

you'll love it dan. i think it's totally yr kinda record. (i adore it)

― Jams Murphy (ystrickler), Thursday, 23 March 2006 19:49 (eighteen years ago) link

this is what i wanted the new tv on the radio album to sound like. instead that album sounded like shit. drums not dead is great.

― titchyschneider (titchyschneider), Thursday, 23 March 2006 19:57 (eighteen years ago) link

"All these Animal Collective comparisons baffle me. Same w/ Black Dice."

that's funny. listening to it with people last night who hadn't heard it yet, the comments all were along the lines of "when did beck join black dice?" and "so, these guys have been hanging out with the animal collective, huh."

― prince rupert, Thursday, 23 March 2006 20:07 (eighteen years ago) link

this album continues to grow on me....so hypnotic and just seems to occupy its own little universe...

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, 23 March 2006 20:12 (eighteen years ago) link

this album totally won me over, in the end. live it was a lot more INYRFACE and PIERCING though. and a lot of fun

― willem -- (willem), Thursday, 23 March 2006 20:36 (eighteen years ago) link

no liars no credulity

― noizem duke (noize duke), Thursday, 23 March 2006 20:46 (eighteen years ago) link

tru dat.

have you guys heard ft(The Shadow Government)? their album Guns of August I could see appealing to Liars fans...

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, 23 March 2006 20:59 (eighteen years ago) link

i luv the cover art

― meth lab for doug flutie (sanskrit), Thursday, 23 March 2006 21:13 (eighteen years ago) link

to echo various people upthread, if you like this and haven't heard they were wrong so we drowned, check that out too. it's about as good as drum's not dead, if not a little better.

― sleep (sleep), Thursday, 23 March 2006 22:04 (eighteen years ago) link

i definitely didn't hate the last record...but i never found a compelling reason to put it on repeatedly. i've probably already listened to drum's not dead more times than they were wrong... and i've only had the former for like a week.

― m.c. (clikatowi), Thursday, 23 March 2006 22:27 (eighteen years ago) link

Has anyone else had ploblems playing this on a computer (PC)? I played it before, but now a couple of days later, my computer won't even recognize it as a cd.

― T. Weiss (Timmy), Monday, 3 April 2006 01:13 (eighteen years ago) link

T. Weiss, maybe you have the vinyl version like I do?

― mikko (mikko), Monday, 3 April 2006 10:46 (eighteen years ago) link

Are you in Europe? I heard that Mute's Can reissues were copy-protected, at least in Europe (my US copies work fine). Hopefully this isn't the case; it would suck and suck hard for an indie to start putting copy-protection on their releases.

― Telephonething (Telephonething), Monday, 3 April 2006 11:36 (eighteen years ago) link

I'm in the U.S. It's really weird because I played it like three times then a couple of days later I insterted it and its not even recognized (its a version with the dvd). Its pretty maddenning since this is how I listen to most of my music. Any advice?

― T. Weiss (Timmy), Monday, 3 April 2006 14:13 (eighteen years ago) link

do all other cd's play fine?

― Christopher Costello (CGC), Monday, 3 April 2006 22:17 (eighteen years ago) link

suck hard for an indie

owned by EMI

― jeff rosenberg (pukeandburn), Monday, 3 April 2006 22:30 (eighteen years ago) link

owned by EMI

Really? Did not know that. That's worrying, then.

Is there a Philips Compact Disc logo anywhere on the packaging? And does anyone else have this issue? I was going to buy Drum's Not Dead over the weekend, but if it's at all copy-protected then I'm going straight to p2p.

― Telephonething (Telephonething), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 00:07 (eighteen years ago) link

mine wasn't copy protected at all. there's probably something wrong with the weiss guy's pc.

― Christopher Costello (CGC), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 00:10 (eighteen years ago) link

there's probably something wrong with the weiss guy's pc.
if this is the case, does any one have any suggestions, as its my primary use for playing music. all of my other cds play fine.

― T. Weiss (Timmy), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 04:04 (eighteen years ago) link

Only after the first time I took it out of my computer did I have any problem, I didn't however notice any Philips logo.

― T. Weiss (Timmy), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 04:07 (eighteen years ago) link

isn't this some "enhanced" cd with a billion videos on it? (not a DVD?)

not to get tech support on you but some exact details of how it's going unrecognised, error messages & such could be useful. also, do they have a forum or anything? I'd expect more than one person to have had this problem, you might want to look there.

― fandango (fandango), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 07:43 (eighteen years ago) link

when i put it in my computer, i can see that there is, apart form the audio files, also a jpg of the cover on the cd. i guess that's a way to make it copy-protected.

― thomas, Tuesday, 4 April 2006 07:54 (eighteen years ago) link

Depends what ripping program you use, I have no problem ripping the audio (but not the data files) with Exact Audio Copy. How iTunes etc handles it all I have no idea...

I'm surprised you can't see the video files (got "show hidden files" unticked in tools>folder options?) but I've had problems myself on some discs being able to access multimedia stuff with obscure ways of presenting itself.

― fandango (fandango), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 08:43 (eighteen years ago) link

i ripped mine with creative media source or something like that. i listened to it in itunes a few times, too.

― Christopher Costello (CGC), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 16:15 (eighteen years ago) link

i've had no problems playing/ripping my copy in my pc. there's no compact disc logo anywhere to be found, but i think "brilliant box" packaging generally doesn't have the logo in its usual place (the disc tray). oh, and no videos on the cd -- why would there be when the album comes with a dvd?

― spastic heritage (spastic heritage), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 17:08 (eighteen years ago) link

The CD won't even be recognized in my drive. When I get info on my D Drive, it says 0 mbs free and 0 mbs used. Very frustrating.

― T. Weiss (Timmy), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 18:17 (eighteen years ago) link

maybe your cd is damaged?

― Christopher Costello (CGC), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 18:50 (eighteen years ago) link

just buy it on vinyl geniuses

― jinx hijinks (sanskrit), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 19:11 (eighteen years ago) link

The only way to tell is to try it on another drive or another CD player. It's the scientific method. Observation: disc is unrecognized. Hypothesis: the disc is fucked. Prediction: the disc will fail on any CD player. Experiment: Try disc on another CD player. If disc works, disc is not fucked. New observation: computer disc player is inconsistent at best.

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 19:28 (eighteen years ago) link

"My room has been plunged into darkness. Is my light bulb dead?? What should I do????"

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 19:30 (eighteen years ago) link

Well I tried it other cd players, and it works fine. Just won't play on my computer anymore (haven't had a chance to try it on other computers)

― T. Weiss (Timmy), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 20:07 (eighteen years ago) link

two weeks pass...

Are we really through with this album already? Really? I'd say Radiohead have some competition when they return.

― honorary joy division roadie (Bimble...), Sunday, 23 April 2006 11:26 (eighteen years ago) link

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