Touted as their ‘electronic’ album, it’s not necessarily an album you can dance to (maybe with the exception of ‘Brats’) and instead is a more introverted electronic sound that’s hard to make sense of at first. It feels very weird to play this record in daylight what with all the unsettling nuances, Angus Andrew’s low-register, almost incomprehensible vocals and weird melodies.
As you can imagine, this location influenced their 6th album WIXIW – a very eerie, murky and claustrophobic listen. Well Brooklyn trio Liars chose a warehouse in downtown LA, a place without windows. It’s not uncommon to hear of artists locking themselves away in isolated places to get a record finished and to inspire them. It might not be their most affecting album to date, but it's certainly an experience to listen through, and an often rewarding one at that. Tracks like Monkey Riches and New Town Burnout also showed off a more ambitious side to the group to dizzying effects, with barrages of colour and vibrancy oscillating through the listener's mind.
There are the more outright accessible songs like Today's Supernatural and Rosie Oh, but both still carry something otherworldly about them whether it be Avey Tare's impassioned yelps or Panda Bear's meandering coos. Centipede HZ is Animal Collective super-charged with ideas, with many of them being sprayed onto the record often simultaneously creating a cacophony of noise where one really has to look deep for the hidden gems. But it seems unfair to completely compare Centipede HZ to Merriweather, as the more considered and emotive soundscapes have been replaced by something altogether more challenging and messy. It's never easy to follow up a landmark album 2009's Merriweather Post Pavilion sprung Baltimore's finest experimental electronic group to new heights critically and commercially and remains as one of the most iconic albums in a long time.