TFCF

Fifteen years on from their first album, it reminds you that this band's trajectory is beholden to nothing except Andrew's own insatiable curiosity. Long may it remain this wayward.

‘TFCF’ feels like a greatest hits of all the sounds the band had been honing since the back-end of the ’90s.

Despite the band's downsizing, TFCF demonstrates that Andrew has always been the beating heart of Liars. This time, the unexpected was hearing him bare his without any uncertainty.

As soon as you get a grip on it, TFCF wriggles into another shape. But even at its weirdest, Angus Andrew’s songwriting couldn’t be clearer, and that’s what makes it a mess worth unravelling.

Like some of their greatest records ... TFCF creates a metaphorical space for the listener to explore to excellent effect. Although Liars may constantly evolve, their high quality output is undeniably reliable.

Above all, it's TFCF's haunting mood that unites its fragments into something true to the outsider perspective at the heart of all of Liars' music.

TFCF might well be an Angus Andrew solo album under the Liars banner, but what he’s achieved here fits within the his band’s remit for consistently morphing and confounding expectation. More importantly, it’s heartening to see an album as intriguing as this emerge from such a traumatic time.

It has sufficient new features, sweepingly introduced so as to constitute a more-than-satisfying reinvention. So acoustic instrumentation, something Liars had hitherto generally eschewed, can be found here and found in diverse forms.

When a band sheds most of its members, keeping the name going can often seem like a hollow exercise in monetary pursuit. With TFCF, the Liars name lives on, and Andrew honors it while also forging new paths.

The Liars’ eight record is another great one, another reinvention, and a great first step for Angus Andrew on his own. Everything is the same, and nothing is the same.

This earnest, well-crafted jumble couldn’t be a more appropriate marker of the irrepressible project’s evolution, nor a more fitting testament to Liars’ legacy.

TFCF is riddled with confusion and self-reflection, and it faithfully continues Liars’ unconventional stride, though this time it had to affect him intimately and personally to take him there.