What an album to start with! To make rather unoriginal use of an extended metaphor, imagine Surfer Rosa as a male-to-female transsexual weightlifter, coming off the steroids and growing big bitch tits because of it. Muscularly powerful but totally precise, the songs have these exhilarating, pounding rhythms laced with white hot guitar lines that drive through the brain, scouring it of the day-to-day crud of mundanity. That Yow's somewhat onomatopaeic singing resembles Black Francis' in no way reduces the slice of yowly originality he carves out with it. You do well to recognise the name of the song you're listening to in its vocals, but a leaf through the lyric sheets finds typical Albini-pack filth and degradation. I'm not necessarily saying they're derivative, but that's not really important. Like the best rock music, the vocals are only a particularly psychologically potent part of the instrumentation. This is a real headphone album. I find that concentrating on the origin of the sound from when you listen to music with phones on has the cool effect of placing is it inside your head. Which is where Liar should be. In your mind.
According to some indie survivor on Amazon's review page, Puss from this album was put on a double single with Oh, The Guilt by Nirvana. Depending on your point of view but in the best possible way in either case, Puss is the song that most resembles Nirvana or Nirvana resembles the song Puss most. The other jewel in the crown is Boilermaker, with an agression that just keeps ratcheting the song up until it dissolves into an acidic guitar solo. Gladiator is equally driving and pugnacious, The Art Of Self-Defense has got this cool electric gargling, Whirl has gorgeous guitars that threaten to overpower the bottom-of-the-well vocals. Like the Stooges on Dirt, they can also slow it all down to even more devastating effect, as on Zachariah. There is no song here that has nothing going for it. Even the dirge Slave Ship and the dumb punk Rope sound brilliant in the hands of these amazing musicians.
According to some indie survivor on Amazon's review page, Puss from this album was put on a double single with Oh, The Guilt by Nirvana. Depending on your point of view but in the best possible way in either case, Puss is the song that most resembles Nirvana or Nirvana resembles the song Puss most. The other jewel in the crown is Boilermaker, with an agression that just keeps ratcheting the song up until it dissolves into an acidic guitar solo. Gladiator is equally driving and pugnacious, The Art Of Self-Defense has got this cool electric gargling, Whirl has gorgeous guitars that threaten to overpower the bottom-of-the-well vocals. Like the Stooges on Dirt, they can also slow it all down to even more devastating effect, as on Zachariah. There is no song here that has nothing going for it. Even the dirge Slave Ship and the dumb punk Rope sound brilliant in the hands of these amazing musicians.
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