Despite being renowned for a somewhat fluid membership since their formation in 2000, it would seem that Liars has now become the solo concern of its only constant member, Angus Andrew. That’s not to say that Andrew has taken on all the instrumentation on this, the tenth album to be released under the Liars’ name though.
The Apple Drop brings on board Australian avant-garde jazz drummer Laurence Pike, multi-instrumentalist Cameron Deyell and lyricist Mary Pearson Andrew for a feast of eerie, dreamlike and trippy pop. Indeed, things so frequently veer off-kilter, but into a particular direction, that it feels like The Good, the Bad and the Queen might have taken up residency on Andrew’s stereo while he was composing these tunes. This is especially evident on “Slow and Turn Inward” and “King of the Crooks”, which both even feature an approximation of Damon Albarn’s little boy lost vocal style.
That’s not to say that The Apple Drop is a one-note piece. Elsewhere, there’s an almost Peter Hook-like bassline and a hip-swinging groove on “Big Appetite”, the woozy and narcotic fog of “The Start” and the weird but bombastic “My Pulse to Ponder”. However, spaced-out disorientation does generally seem to have been Andrew’s aim with this release, and it is stamped into the DNA of the album.
The Apple Drop finishes up with the pairing of “Acid Crop” and “New Planets New Undoings” and it is here that Andrew and his cohorts finally hit a tripped-out peak. “I’ve heard it all before” he chants but, to be fair, The Apple Drop is another step forward in Liars’ constantly evolving sonic journey, which usually has something new to digest and can rarely be accused of going back over the same old ground – unlike plenty of others who similarly emerged from that New York neo-punk Meet Me in the Bathroom scene at the beginning of the century.
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