Liars
Barby
Tel Aviv
June 15

When a band decides to play brand new material live, it’s always a gamble; audiences tend to want to hear what they know, or at least what they’ve heard before. To play new songs half a world away from your home audience is even harder. But that was a hurdle that Australia’s Liars tackled head on when the trio took on Tel Aviv’s Barby club on June 15.

Liars’ music has varied in sound over six albums since 2001, but one thread has always carried through: a sense of dread. On record, the band creates pitch-black atmosphere with abrasive sounds, off-balance dance beats and towering front man Angus Young’s droning (but somehow catchy) vocals.

The new material Liars played in Tel Aviv – the first since their album WIXIW in 2012 – was often hit or miss. When the band nailed it, they were unstoppable; many songs sounded like the devilish spawn of Joy Division with tight, foreboding bursts of energy. Others took a more sprawling, layered approach with synthesizer screeches and stuttering beats piling on top of each other, building to down and dirty climaxes. Occasionally, though, Liars’ drone lost its tension and left the crowd waiting for the finish.

New track “Mess on a Mission” was an example of Liars’ at their best: blips and beeps forming an aural bed of needles, with Young’s explosive, falsetto howling of the title. “I Saw You From the Lifeboat” was similarly jarring, psychedelic in a ‘trip gone terribly wrong’ sort of way.

The experience was visceral; blaring sounds and flashing lights giving the show’s best moments the same ‘gasping for air’ feeling of that split-second when you wake up from a nightmare. Liars loved to toy with the expectations of the crowd; one song built to a feverish intensity – the moment we all expected the tension to break into a chorus, the band simply pulled the plug. Silence, then “Thank you, Tel Aviv.”

Young’s demeanor was a perfect match for his hellish sound. Newly sheared, his hair was short save for bangs that hung down to his chin, allowing him a dark curtain to hide behind while his tall, thin body flailed in accordance with the intensity of the music. It was the kind of performance that, whether you embraced the noise or not, made it hard to look away.