Brooklyn (by way of Australia and Omaha) art freaks Liars are the torchbearers for those few electroclash survivors who took a wonderful decline into the far reaches of oddness. They pushed the boundaries a few years back with their witch-themed sophomore release, and their latest, Drum’s Not Dead, goes even further out there on some sort of enlightened caveman tribal trip. That they manage to create a memorable album out of little more than multiple drum kits, washes of indefinable noise and some catchy chants is impressive; that they do it with what seems like an absolute obliviousness to any defining concepts of musical structure is simply amazing. Somehow there are even abstract “hits” on the record — the pounding ‘It Fit When I Was a Kid’ is too sinister to ignore, and the closer ‘The Other Side Of Mt. Heart Attack’ is one of the most uplifting finales in recent memory. The album purports to follow some sort of storyline involving the characters Drum and Mt. Heart Attack, and if that isn’t freaky enough it also contains a DVD with three album-length films, one of which features exclusively a snail.
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