Live Review

Liars – Heaven, London

• 19th Nov 2010

There are some gigs that you could still confidently review if you were blindfolded, thrown into the boot of a car, driven outside the city limits and thrown into a ditch five minutes before the band were due to go on stage. A Bon Jovi stadium date for instance, we all know how that’d go (they’d probably still be on when you crawled back, just kicking into their seventeenth encore), or some cheeky indie chappies in vests and trilbies playing a Camden toilet (beer, shouting, possibly one earworm single that will haunt every student night from now until the day when humanity is plunged into cold dark unforgiving space – see: Chelsea Dagger/Apply Some Pressure et al).

Well it wouldn’t really have taken much of a leap for me to write this without setting foot in Heaven to see Liars. But there would’ve been one massively pressing issue, which to be fair would only really affect me in the grand scheme of things: I wouldn’t have been party to what at this stage will surely walk away with the coveted ‘my best gig of the year award’ (so close Owen Pallett, so very close).

This was truly the display of a band at the peak of their powers. Sure, it’s been a lengthy peak. Their output since their 2001 debut has been consistently excellent, but there is something of a regal languid elegance about them now – both in their live show and their recorded output. In the case of the latter we’ve witnessed a shift from the arch and cryptic experimental approach of They Were Wrong So We Drowned and Drum’s Not Dead to the more liveable Liars and Sisterworld, which suggest a band more comfortable in their own skins.

And they certainly appear that way tonight, and are all too happy to delightfully tear their songs apart and stick them back together with old Sellotape that they found stuck to the floor. Sometimes this leaves the songs sounding like a series of explosions overlaid with the howls of men in serious agony (Angus Andrew’s vocals are enveloped in almost decadent layers of effects). The rhythm section is reminiscent of the beating heart of someone in the throes of terror, and the creepiness of the whole thing is upped by Liars’ disdain for overly sharp edges.

There’s a good mix of old and new. One minute we’re being bathed in the ethereal beauty of ‘The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack’, the next we’re torn to shreds by the unrelenting battery of guitars that is ‘Plaster Casts of Everything’. ‘Scissor’, from their latest album was a particular highlight. The effect is like being on a galleon sailing down a particularly turbulent River Styx, with the massively addictive Andrews as our Charon. The rest of the audience are, like me, spellbound, which does have the unfortunate effect of making parts of the evening a stare out between us and the front man, but I think with a gig of this standard you don’t really want to risk missing a second of what’s happening on stage.

The room was not as packed as it should’ve been. If you were in London last Thursday and spent the night watching Nigella Kitchen, shame on you. We are treated to two encores, which include ‘Be Quiet Mt. Heart Attack’; an absolute treat, of course. On the tube on the way home I think I must have had the look of a man on the walk of shame after a night with a supermodel. Did that really happen? Thankfully, it did. Nice one Liars.