Oneida/Liars - Atheists, Reconsider
(Arena Rock)
Liars - Fins to Make Us More Fish-Like EP
(Mute)
Count me among the ranks of Liars supporters. The only thing keeping their album They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top off my top ten list for 2002 is that it was originally released in 2001. However the two EPs released after the album don't impress me much. In fact, they make me question why I like the ...Monument on Top album so much in the first place.
The Liars/Oneida split EP, Atheists, Reconsider, is really just an insult to the record buying public, as it is marred by Liars heretofore-unnoticed-by-me pretentiousness and Oneida's wholesale endorsement of that pretentiousness. The basis of this EP is two cover songs: Liars covering Oneida's "Rose and Licorice," and Oneida covering Liars' "Every Day is a Child With Teeth." To expand this neat idea for a 7" into an overpriced and overbloated 6 song EP, two non-cover songs are contributed by each band, and if you hadn't heard these two bands before, you'd probabably think the bands should stick to covering each other's songs (and, yes, that statement makes absolutely no sense).
Oneida's two originals are enjoyable albeit standard punk fare. "Privilege" is a fierce, fast song with a jackhammer guitar part that lasts just over 100 seconds. "Fantastic Morgue" is a little more laid back (and lasts a full minute longer), its more melodic guitar part and cut-off 80s production style making it sound a bit like a Minutemen song.
Liars' two originals are bottom-of-the-barrel B-sides. "All in All a Careful Party" is three minutes of sloganeering, clanging toys, hand clapping, and rhythmic laughing... a noisy, pointless clutter that really brings out the worst in Liars.
"Dorothy Taps the Toe of the Tin Man" is seven and a half minutes of sub-"Stomp" pipe-banging, taped conversations, and ghostly atmospherics. Almost no musical content, all pretentious posturing. Granted, "art punk" almost by nature is pretentious, and of course this is the same band that declared, "We've got our finger on the pulse of America." However, in listening to ...Monument on Top, I heard rock and roll not pretentiousness; these two songs have no rock or roll content.
Liars' cover of "Rose and Licorice" is enjoyable though, with its insistent organ vamping and suitably Liars-esque refrain of "grass is growing all the time, seratonin's going through my mind." Oneida's choice of Liars tune, however, is quite suspect, as they pick the worst song off of Liars' nonessential three-song EP, Fins to Make Us More Fish-Like, "Everyday is a Child With Teeth." Oneida double the length and distill the song to its essence, getting rid of the annoying fluctuating tone and ultra-aggressive delivery, but it's still just a bad song to pick.
Fins to Make Us More Fish-Like EP contains two other songs (other than the original version of "Everyday..."). The first song is an alternate take on "Grown Men Don't Fall in the River Just Like That," the leadoff track on Liars' album. This version is grittier and noisier around the edges, but ultimately not much different. "Pillars Were Hollow and Filled with Candy So We Tore Them Down" fills the second side of the vinyl and almost makes the EP worth buying. Grinding cranks of guitar noise start up the machine, and with that it lurches forward, dragging against the ground, spurting out harsh but restrained sounds and warning tones until it finally is pulled down by its own weight.
While fakejazz writer David Christensen prophesied that the Fins... EP will mark a great new less-derivative direction for Liars, to me it just sounds like demo versions and B-sides. The cute slogan on "Pillars Were Hollow..." is "Do something magical or disappear." While I still really enjoy the ...Monument on Top album, here's a memo to Liars: putting out so many short releases with subpar tracks might lead to your audience revolting with a similar refrain.
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