Liars : Fuck Buttons : Team Robespierre McCarren Park Pool July 20, 2008 Written by Matt Boyd Photographed by Amy Davidson Opposite Photo: Angus Andrew of Liars

McCarren Park pool was a bed of embers in Sunday’s sun. Anywhere not shaded (nowhere was really shaded) people were sporting the slow, wobbly walk you walk when you’re heat-stroke chokin’ down beers and whiskies and the air is nuclear fire. Monday just around the corner, it sounds like a good time and place for a rock show!

Team Robespierre made the crowd very excited. Hot, saw-toothy waves came oscillating out of their synthesizers as rotten, snotty wordplay came out of their vocalizers. New punk, they call themselves, and, well, alright. Young and snotty a la the Beastie Boys, that’s going on, along with a few nods of homage to the delivery of Ministry and Chicks on Speed.

Team Robespierre


Team Robespierre

The boys descended from the stage and climbed the barriers between the photo pit and the crowd to perform in the close quarters of musical wetworks. Where wetworks is close fighting with a lot of blood, musical wetworks would be close singing and dancing with a lot of sweat and party residue.

Fuck Buttons were next. They’re from the UK, and it took a long time for someone to figure out how to turn them off! I wonder when they will go back to England.

Angus Andrew of Liars	Angus Andrew of Liars

Headliners Liars did that monstrous thing they do and channel through lanky frontman Angus Andrew. Probably no band, with the exception of Sonic Youth, has so well or so successfully straddled the line between charismatic boy band and underground noise kings to such admirable fame. As the noise compositions and the occasional song where the rock beats seemed to come out played backwards were crossed off the setlist, Andrew menaced and delighted the crowd with his animated delivery, a pink be-shirted choreography not unlike the motions of an anthropomorphic World Trade Center directing traffic as it burns.

Liars is a band beyond with a terrible and hypnotic sway. That’s all there is to say.