FEATURE
WHICH IS A WHOLE NEW WORLD FOR ME.”
“MY STUDIO IS RIGHT ON THE WATER,
On The Waterfront
Via a scratchy Skype line, Angus Andrew of Liars tells Doug Wallen he’s finally ready to come home
A
s Angus Andrew prepares to play Liars’ first Australian shows in four years, he’s also promoting the last recorded evidence of the band as a duo. Before multi-instrumentalist Aaron Hemphill amicably exited in 2017, the pair soundtracked the indie film 1/1, starring Lindsey Shaw and Judd Nelson. In typical Liars fashion, the soundtrack is tough to pin down, spanning delicate melodies, channel-surfing experimentation, and body-moving electronics.
who started Liars with Hemphill around the turn of the millennium, emerged last year with TFCF, a Liars album made entirely on his own. Having lived in New York, Berlin, and Los Angeles since the age of 17, Andrew made TFCF after returning to his native Australia. He’s based in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park north of Sydney, in a spot so isolated that it can only be reached by boat.
“It was the last time we actually holed up together,” says Andrew over Skype, reflecting on their time in Denmark cutting the soundtrack. “It’s nice that it’s mostly instrumental, because I think we both would like to have done more music like that.”
“My studio is right on the water,” he says, “which is a whole new world for me. The tides became this big factor, because my boat would get beached. Also, the water would come up through the bottom of the studio. It’s a different environment than I’ve ever been in before. It made things that much more isolated, but more connected to the natural elements.”
Since Hemphill left Liars, he has returned to Berlin – where the band recorded 2006’s Drums Not Dead – and started his own project, Nonpareils. Andrew,
If the 1/1 soundtrack accommodates everything from the floaty, folky ‘Helsingor Lane’ to the dance-driven instrumental ‘Liquorice’, TFCF is no less volatile.
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There’s a dank hip-hop edge to ‘Staring At Zero’ that reflects Andrew’s growing interest in sampling, while ‘No Help Pamphlet’ recalls the home-recorded ruminations of early Sebadoh and Guided by Voices. For all its DIY feel, though, it’s a lovely record, balanced between glistening melodies and weird, wavering layers. “It’s a balance I walk a lot,” Andrew admits. “It’s interesting to me where the line is between writing something just for the sound of it, or writing something that can connect with people on a more practical, song-like [level]. That’s why making that soundtrack was so fun – it was more of a sound project. The challenge is to try to do that but also engage [people].” Beyond that central balance, there was the nagging fact that he was making the eighth Liars album as the band’s sole remaining member. “I was so aware that it would be seen as a kind of explanation of where thebrag.com
