They Were Wrong So We Drowned

I like this album because it sounds exactly like a flawed record should. It's an almost good idea, almost done really well, with tunes you can almost hear and almost dance to. Most bands don't bother trying; Liars aren't afraid to go down in flames.

I bought it and I hated it. I listened again and I still hated it and then, as with most of my favourite albums (cf. the stuff I wrote about Coil's LSD) I was walking around my old university town Swansea, playing this in my walkman when I finally got it. Everything aligned: the concrete buildings of the shopping centre, the sun beating down, the wind that picked up from nowhere...and I found myself listening to "There's Always Room on the Broom" while staring up at the church...



The tracks bleed into each other even if there are gaps between them. The whole album is suffused with a kind of bright, clean light and the sound of splintering wood and the hum of witch-trial generators. Bits sound like they were recorded from inside the cauldron.

You can imagine the Blair woods filling with bodies; Magickal incantations playing off Christian tongue-speak like an 8 Mile bitch session. There's nothing murky or gothic about this album; every track is suffused with a kind of bright, clean half-light, the sound of splintering wood and the hum of witch-trial generators. I haven't tried too hard to work out the lyrics but it sounds like the witches are having some kind of ontological meltdown; like they've found themselves trapped in a different century, battling against a new-crusade, falling into the same dull traps as the druids before them.

The witches are touretting, the Christians massing at the gates, picket fences uprooted and used as vampirestakes. The fires being lit right about...now.

Liars - loose nuts on the velodrome

Okay, if you're being picky, this isn't actually on the album I've been talking about but, hey, it's free and you could always go and buy the goddamn CD. What else you gonna do with your money? Go to India to rub down some lepers?

This post is partly inspired by the Mystical Beast on Flux Information Sciences.


DISCLAIMER: An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming does not endorse the rubbing (or any associated frottage) of lepers. Trust us, these little fellahs can bite like hell.