“They Were Wrong, So We Drowned” (TWWSWD) is the latest from NYC-based indie band Liars, released on February 24th, 2004.
The album starts unassumingly with a clear bell tone ushering in the first track, “Brocken Witch.”
That tone is the only clear, ringing bell on this album, filled with grating dissonance and jangling distorted guitars behind vocals that seem done in quick take. They sound like spoken word meets Radiohead – if Thom Yorke were in the mood to listen to funeral dirges.
Just from reading the track titles on TWWSWD, you can tell this band is a little off. Tracks include “There’s Always Room on the Broom,” “If Your (note: yes, it’s supposed to be “your”) a Wizard Then Why Do You Wear Glasses?,” and closing track “Flow My Tears the Spider Said.”
The moods on the album range from slowly melancholy to inharmoniously upbeat to downright creepy, and the album is very diverse, if consistently jarring.
A major factor in the album’s moodiness is the excellent production by David Andrew Sitek, of fellow NYC band TV on the Radio. Sitek layers parts within one another, creating a cohesive sound from a band whose influences include everything from ’90s electronica to ’70s art-rock to Beck and back again.
Sonically, the album may be dissonant and schizophrenic, but it’s always interesting and always keeps me guessing. Lyrically, it’s just schizophrenic.
TWWSWD is a concept album. A concept album about witches. Yup, witches. I don’t get it either.
Nor do I get what lyrics like “Iron lung/Spider web/From my neck to my head” have to do with witches. I’m fairly certain there’s a divine message in the lyrics that I’m missing, but one can never tell.
The lyrics, like the sound, are Radiohead-esque as well, only even more cryptic, to the point of being too cryptic. Chanted lines like “We are the army you see through the red haze of blood” the end of “Brocken Witch,” and “Hold Hands and it Will Happen Anyway” (which basically chants every negative word – cry, die, choke, thirst – over the course of about fifty seconds) cements the album’s decidedly desperate and manic-depressive feel.
If you’re in the mood for “Kid A” B-sides with a decidedly darker, more cacophonous feel, then this album may be for you.
The album ends with about two and a half minutes of birds chirping and nature sounds. A final quiet release from a dissonant, jarring album. Then there is about two seconds of loud static, completely ruining the gentle, calming release of soothing nature sounds.
I love this band.