(Blast First/Mute Records)
At its best, rock 'n' roll is visceral, thoughtless and as reflexive as a rubber hammer to the knee. Sure, it can be clever (see Pavement), or it can be meditative (see Bruce Springsteen's latest), but that's just beating around the bush. Rock 'n' roll stripped of its pretense is a glorious thing.
Enter the Liars. Already legendary around New York for their intense live performances, the Liars attempt to harness that energy on their debut full-length They Threw Us All In a Trench and Stuck a Monument On Top. They display a penchant for long non-sequiturs, but their music is much more direct.
Armed with the standard rock instruments'guitar, bass, drums-they create an intense, strafing sound that remains melodic nonetheless, due mainly to the work of bassist Pat Noecker. The result is a danceable cacophony, no easy task. In the first single, \Mr. You're on Fire Mr.,"" they up the ante by inserting a drum machine where guitar fills should be, and ""The Garden Was Crowded and Outside"" has a beat built around a typewriter, the drum machine and a busy signal.
With these experiments and several others, the Liars constantly play around with rhythm, often coming off as jerky, fragmented and loose. Most of the time this is exciting and catchy, but not surprisingly, the result is hit-and-miss, leading to several grating tracks. For the most part, though, the Liars tear through the nine tracks on They Threw Us... at a breakneck pace, coming in at well under half an hour before the last track kicks into a three-second loop that repeats for another 25 minutes. An attempt to cleverly pad out a full-length that would have passed for an EP? Maybe, but the Liars dare the listener to turn them off, and are just good enough to get away with it.
(Sub Pop)
One look at the cover of Beachwood Sparks' new EP Make the Cowboy Robots Cry and you know the band is treading into different ground. Gone are the nature scenes depicting mountain skylines or lush forests. This cover is a psychedelic future featuring creatures with tails on both ends, spotted plants and of course, a cowboy robot.
The album is a departure from the straight-up country rock that earned the band its Gram Parsons mantle. Cowboy Robots furthers the psychedelic overtones introduced on last years Once We Were Trees, but stretches it across the whole album. Songs frequently change tempo and the band experiments with orchestration and multiple instruments. Think of a slower version of the Beach Boys' Smiley Smile.
Cowboy Robots can be looked at as a mini-concept album about death and nature. The references aren't as apparent as the ones about trees on the last record, but they are there. ""Galapagos"" is about reincarnation with lines like ""When I disappear, I'll go to a place of memories"" and ""My words replaced with sound and tones/fins were now my skin and bones.""
""Drinkswater"" talks about being happy in a nature-induced afterlife instead of their sad friends in a bleak urban future described as ""cold grey squares."" Both ""Hibernation"" and ""Ghostdance 1492"" talk about skipping the cold harsh winters for warmth and beauty. The former literally mentions spring time while the latter would rather die than sleep in the cold.
Overall, Cowboy Robots is a forgettable EP with a couple exceptions. Though ""Drinkswater"" and ""Ponce de Leon Blues"" may prove to be two of Beachwood Sparks' strongest tracks, the rest of the songs would be overlooked on a full-length album.
