Webcuts Music

Somehow, from somewhere, emails from the Noisevox people have been regularly appearing in the Webcuts inbox begging our attention. Having kinda dealt with them in the usual in-house manner, we felt it was time enough to take notice, especially since lately we’ve started frequenting their site like the insatiable music fans we are. In the last few weeks on their Noisemakers on Noisevox segment with ex-MTV VJ John Norris, they’ve hosted interviews and live performances with the bewitching Warpaint, Australia’s Temper Trap and this week, the 1/3 Australian, Liars talking about their latest album, Sisterworld. Digging back further into their site and you’ll find a burnt-to-a-crisp looking Lady Gaga doing her thing and other live in studio appearances from Deerhunter, Vivian Girls and HEALTH.

Taken straight from their email, because really, I have better things to do than re-write press releases…

A “sisterworld”, according to Liars, is an alternate existence, a space that one escapes to, or has thrust upon them. That may sound heavy, but it’s not necessarily. “It could be a sewing circle, or something more metaphysical, says the band’s Aaron Hemphill, on this week’s Noisemakers on Noisevox, “it’s creating an alternate to what’s given. It’s a place of release and some of the album deals with the consequences of people that fail in finding that place, or are denied it.”  They don’t always make for a pretty picture, the scenarios on Sisterworld, released in March, but it does make for one of the more powerful and fascinating records of the year. And Noisemakers is pleased to be serving up a new episode featuring Liars performing four of Sisterworld’s finest: the hypnotic “I Can See An Outside World”, “Scarecrows on a Killer Slant”, all savage rap-rock, the explosive lead single “Scissor” and the darkly funny, slacker-iffic “The Overachievers” and its chant of “L-A! L-A!”.

Ah yes, Los Angeles. It’s the city that Liars now call home (they’ve previously been based in New York and Berlin) and a place whose ability to build up dreams only to dash them and leave many a broken individual is without peer. If Sisterworld has a muse, it’s the City of Angels. “If you think about the perception of Hollywood,” says Julian Gross, “it’s this glittery street, beautiful land, and then you get there and it’s like zombie crack-land. It’s really scary — and I think it’s an interesting dual reality that is squished into this one word — ‘Hollywood’.” Hence, one creates a sisterworld. Still, says Liars frontman Angus Andrew, who wrote much of his contributions to the album in an apartment that he had rented above an LA marijuana dispensary, tells Noisemakers host John Norris that the concept is a universal one, “LA was the inspiration for these ideas, but it’s also important to point out that really this could happen anywhere. You could live in rural Australia and need to find a “sisterworld” because you don’t fit in.”

See Liars and all the episodes of Noisemakers on Noisevox only at www.noisevox.org.