Friday evening started out as a total fucking dud. But I guess frustration and waiting puts me in the perfect mood for the doom drone of Liars, who's Friday night show was pleasantly not cancelled this time.

About the Liars discography, I loved the dance punk of the EPs and the first album. It was 2002-3. Dance punk was good. I still think it's pretty good. I thought the second album, the witch one, was even better. Totally fucked up and still completely different than any album that year. It was pleasing to see a buzz band practically kill the "sound" it was most known for. I didn't really get the backlash to it. Was it called "disappointing" because it wasn't dance punk? Or because it was pretentious?

Here's the thing though, ALL music is pretentious. Every single note played or recorded ever. Art is pretentious. But here's also the other thing, it's already got a built-in defense: it's art! So calling out music as pretentious is almost a bullshit moot point. That Sufjan project, that Grandma Fiery Furnaces album, The Mars Volta: you either like it or you don't. And if you like it, and it's something that connects for you, what's the point in resisting it? Don't be a pussy. Like what you like. And if you don't, then you don't. We already know it's pretentious.

Mini-rant aside, They Were Wrong So We Drowned was a perfect segue for this third album, Drum's Not Dead. Almost everything in this third album is foreshadowed in the second one: the dark lyrics, the drumstick clanging, the falsetto, and of course, the drums.

I fucking love drums. Have you heard Dave Grohl bang on QOTSA's "Song for the Dead"? Have you seen Danny Carey or that Mars Volta drummer live? Or Conrad/Jason sharing duties for Trail of Dead? Drums are the skeleton of the sound for those bands. Hell even the drummer for Walkmen is great.

If drums are the skeleton then Liars are pure skull. Lanky lead singer Angus even has the consistency of a caveman in a suit two sizes too big. The lighting for the show was almost always squarely on the drums the whole time. I saw it live, but I still have no idea how they can get their drums to sound like that. I think it's in how they mic the drums, but mostly the drums themselves. For one of the songs, the drummer sat on the floor and drummed the kickdrum with his sticks! The other guy would switch between a guitar, some pedals, and his drums.

The place was far from sold out so the show was noticeably "in-crowd" free, only the fans. Which means when Angus sang "Fly fly the devil's in your eye shoot shoot" the crowd yelled back "WE DO! WE DO!"

They played all of the faster songs from Drum's Not Dead and I think only one of the slower ones. All the doom tracks from They Were Wrong were played, but not "Room on the Broom" or "They Don't Want Your Corn", which are the two tracks from that album that sound more like the first album. No compromising. They obviously didn't play anything from the EPs or the first album. They didn't bring any keyboards.

One of the best shows I've seen this year. Oh and they didn't get up and go backstage between the last song and the one song encore. Because that's pretentious.