Liars
Sisterworld

A forest that burns inexorably, frenzied volcanoes that could explode at any moment, a noise earthquake. The new album by Liars is the roar of a maddened nature: perhaps yes, they have put aside the post-noise ravings of an impressive and incomprehensible "Drum's Not Dead," but "Sisterworld" is the astounding return of a band that has never made me so shaken, even when it delved into the psyche with more or less skittish episodes.

"Sisterworld" concentrates the apocalypse in 42 minutes, and it does so with a spectral grace, almost as if it were the listener's fate. The extraordinary "Scissor", at the opening, is enough to shatter the soul into a thousand pieces: the singing of enchanted sirens, almost the memory of a Bjork-like "Submarine" taken up by a desperate Devendra Banhart, is torn apart by a sudden rock roar, which shakes, torments, and scatters emotions on the sand. It's the cry of a castaway who cannot escape his feelings.

And "Sisterworld" gives no respite: the beautiful, following "No Barrier Fun" roars over bass loops, sudden movements of strings and fairy chimes, but it is not exempt from that poetic dirt that freezes the blood. Ruins.

Rotten is the whirlpool that suffocates "Here Comes All The People", a monster that bites with sharp jaws, jumping from one moment to another from a broken indie rock rhythm to enchanting piano loops, only to suffocate, increasingly, against a curse wickedly carried out. And the curse materializes with the bewildering "Drip," emphatic and introspective, and in the grotesque punk of "Scarecrows On A Killer Slant" that shoots violence like a drill into the brain. The roots of a burning forest that firmly grasp your ankles, enchanting you, seducing you, killing you inside, before a crooked almost Christmas litany ("I Still Can See An Outside World") even moves with its airy choruses of drunken poets, lost in the dark paths of the forest. And the bass that caresses, the guitar that goes crazy.

And then comes, like a punch, a union between carnal beauty and snippets of anger, "Proud Evolution," inexplicable and beautiful, is proof of the greatness of a band capable of framing the unthinkable and making it magnificent. Something also happens in the subsequent rock ballad, "Drop Dead," macabre, accompanies the fall of trees scorched by musical fire, crushing us, avoiding any redemption even in the final triptych: "The Overachievers,” clumsy and of low quality, yet laden with blood and death like few other songs, the haunting lullaby "Goodnight Everything,” which coos while disemboweling and, finally, the grand finale of an enchanting "Too Much, Too Much," a magical example of unreachable and exhausting beauty, because so rarefied and impossible to lay claim to every illusion. And the nightmare ends. The forest stops burning, finally there is peace. Inside, we feel better, and we can't wait for our soul to burn again under these notes.

A cruel spell that everyone would want to undergo.