“Broken Witch” by the Liars

The Liars are what one might call a polarizing band, even by the standards of Indie Noise Rockers. They eventually managed to garner a measure of critical acclaim, but it’s worth noting that their debut album received absolutely blistering reviews upon its initial release, and while the Indie critics do like it better now than they did then, we’re not talking about a resurgence on the level of Weezer’s Pinkerton here. Now, probably the best known song from that first album is its sole single, “There’s Always Room on the Broom”, but since it sounds absolutely nothing like the rest of the album, I picked the album’s opening track, which is far more indicative of their overall sound, to review here. I’m pretty sure what they were trying to do here was to make a modernized, album-length version of “The End” by the Doors. But the only reason that band got away with this kind of ridiculous self-indulgence was that Jim Morrison was such a charismatic performer that he could recite pretentious half-spoken nonsense-talk over a vaguely creepy instrumental and still come across as completely hypnotic. Without anyone that even approaches Morrison’s presence, the Liars’ attempt at the same thing just comes off as utterly insufferable. I’ve heard the Liars described as one of those bands that hipsters pretend to like for image reasons, and judging from this song, there’s probably some truth to that description.

Verdict: Bad.

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