Mess

Now seven albums deep into their career, Liars remain a lasting and distinguished presence, one that continues to question the confinement of genre and fashions their identity around a refusal to do so.

Mess is characteristically confident and brash, but humane and enduring. In short, it’s up there with the rest of their unerringly brilliant back-catalogue.

The kind of envelope-pushing on Mess is nothing if not mature, simultaneously punk as fuck and utterly refined.

As the trio continue to remould and refine their craft, Mess, an album fuelled by impulse, demonstrates their ideological core hasn’t moved an inch.

The homogeneity of sound is fascinating and oppressive and inscrutable, a brooding cosmic puzzle that Liars keep rearranging to new effects and opaque ends.

Liars continue their foray into electronic music with a series of incredibly bold, heavy tech house fusions.

Mess may be Liars’ darkest album, which is saying a lot for a band so well versed in cultic, gloomy theatrics.

As with their previous six albums, Liars find a way to both innovate and deliver a brand-loyal effort with (dis)ease.

By and large, it’s a beast of a record and free from overtly po-faced earnestness

With overwhelming confidence the Brooklyn-based trio present 11 songs of unerring quality and an almost uncountable numbers of flicks and tricks. 

It pretty much encapsulates the band's evolution -- from scrappy startups in Brooklyn's turn-of-the-century dance-punk scene to witchcraft storytellers bashing nebulous sounds together to ambient-electro perfectionists. 

If there’s a record that sums up the spirit of Liars – that dedication to unsettling, disorientating anarchy – ‘Mess’ may just be it.