You’ve heard of breakup records. “TFCF,” the eighth album by Liars memorializes the end of a 17-year creative relationship between frontman Angus Andrew and instrumentalist Aaron Hemphill, who left the group earlier this year.
Long before the split, Andrew, now the sole member of Liars (who will perform at the Ballroom at the Outer Space in Hamden on Sept. 20) recorded most of the sounds on “TFCF” (short for “Theme From Crying Fountain,” a reference to the closing track) in Los Angeles, then relocated to Australia to care for his ailing father.
Shortly after, on a visit to Berlin, Hemphill told Andrew it was over; they remain friends. Andrew returned to Australia, set up a studio on an isolated island north of Sydney (with his L.A. sound files), recorded insects, birds and other nature sounds, and pieced together the 11 tracks that make up “TFCF.”
The album was released on Aug. 25, though “Cred Woes,” the lead single, came out in June, along with shocking, instantly iconic album-cover art: a photo of a jilted, slack-jawed Andrew in a wedding dress, sitting alone in a restaurant booth, next to an untouched red cake and floral arrangement. The image says it all.
The music is similarly downcast. It’s also cinematic and expansive, a kaleidoscope of acoustic guitars, synthesizers and ambient sounds, with Andrew’s deadpan voice tying it all together. He doesn’t disguise his pain:
“We both were broke right from the start,” Andrew sing-speaks on “Staring At Zero,” amid cicadas, howls and xylophones. “Why can’t you shoot me through my heart?”
From a tour stop in Michigan, Andrew spoke at length about the making of “TFCF,” performing Liars’ music with a live band, and what it means to start a new chapter of his creative life.
Q: You began work on “TFCF” when you were living in L.A. and Aaron was still in the band. What happened from there?
A: I moved to Australia and I began work on the record. Aaron was living in Berlin. It just so happened that we were also in the process of just trying to finish a soundtrack that we were working on. I went to Berlin pretty soon after I moved to Australia and I met with Aaron. That’s when we had this discussion, and he said that he needed to leave the band. I went back to Australia and finished making the record.
Q: You moved to an island and worked with what you’d already recorded, correct?
A: Yes. I’d been working on it for a little while at that point, so I had a fair amount of material to revisit. I realized I had been mulling over this scenario already with the music, the tyranny of distance that Aaron and I were experiencing, and that a lot of what I was writing about was actually the decay of our creative relationship. We were still very close friends, but it was becoming quite clear that as a creative unit, we were starting to fall apart. I hadn’t really acknowledged that as my subject matter until I went home after that trip to Berlin and looked at what I’d been working on. I’d been documenting this decay.
The other part that’s important is that our creative relationship was less of a collaboration and more of a critique of each other. I relied a lot on Aaron for his perspective and his taste. When I had this conversation with Aaron and went back to look at the work, suddenly I was faced with the prospect of critiquing myself, making my own decisions about what would work and what wouldn’t. Invariably, that’s quite different than how the outcome would be if we discussed it for a while.
It was also interesting to then navigate through my own work, to see which things applied and which didn’t necessarily seem like they were so much about what I wanted them to be. That was a big part of it. It was a huge loss for me, in terms of the realization of the partnership dissolving, but then, at the same time, there was some sense of empowerment, I suppose, where you no longer are in a situation where you are discussing the work. You’re just basically saying, “This is what it’s going to be.” You have to go from your gut. It’s a scarier scenario, but certainly one that’s empowering.
Q: It must have been freeing, and also a little terrifying.
A: Yes. There was another pretty large element that was going on in my life at the time. I decided to move back to Australia because my dad was in his last year of life. For the majority of the time I was writing the record, I was living with him and taking care of him. So there was this other large loss that was going on, this sense of disengagement that happens when people get old. Their memories go. It was a very heavy time for me and something that was not easy to navigate through. But as you said, there’s some sort of freeing element to all of that as well, this acknowledgment of time that has passed and a new beginning.
Q: Musically, there’s connective tissue between the tracks on “TFCF,” spoken-word excerpts and segues and so on. It’s almost like a hip-hop record, in a sense. Sequencing the music together on the album must have been its own lengthy creative process.
A: Definitely. One of the most important things these days, for me, in putting a record together is approaching the work as an album and not individual songs. It was really important for me to imagine the two sides of the record, how you enter into the first side, how you enter into the second side, and so on. I also felt, even though I mentioned the heavy sadness and sorrow of the period for me, that I needed to allow for a bit of an opening up, a sunrise, to happen in the second half of the record. I felt that was important to sequence into the structure of the album, that there was some sort of resolution, a door opening of some sort.
What you said about hip-hop and connective tissue: I really like that idea. It ties in a bit with a process I was using to make the record, which was all of these samples of myself. It’s really a practical product of needing to figure out how to put all of these instruments together, while I was way out in the bush. Obviously I couldn’t have, like, a xylophone or all kinds of weird instruments there. Putting them all together in this haphazard way before I left L.A. was important. I can see the connection with hip-hop: the idea of sampling because maybe you didn’t have access to those elements in physical reality.
Q: It’s wild to think those pre-recorded sounds were all you had at your disposal when you really started the final work on the album. You had to make the record with what you’d already put down on tape, so to speak.
A: Yes. It’s part and parcel with technology, too, the ability to sample sounds and then transpose them to a keyboard. Theoretically, once you have one note of an instrument, then you have all the notes. It’s an amazing thing that I’d never really taken advantage of. It was nice, also, to be limited in that way, to have what I needed already there and just to work through it. But it took some time to figure it out. When I first moved and was set up out there in my studio in the bush, I put a microphone outside and was recording the intense birds and cicadas and all of that sort of stuff. Initially, I thought, “Well, maybe this is the record.” I didn’t even know if I could figure out the whole sample thing the way I imagined it. I thought, “This beautiful ambience out here: maybe that’s what the record is going to be.” Eventually I started to work it out.
Q: Even within songs, there are contrasting, connected parts: long introductions, middle sections presenting new ideas, and so on.
A: Some of that comes from the freedom of working alone, allowing things to take sharp left turns as I saw fit. Sometimes that can be difficult when you’re working as a collective. It was the freedom to be able to say, “Okay, at this point, I’m happy that the song abruptly changes into this other thing.”
Q: How does the new album translate into live performance?
A: On almost every album, it has been a really grueling task to take what’s been recorded and to figure out how to put it on stage in a performance. What’s really surprising with this one is how easy it has been. Part of that is I’m working with some really good musicians. What would have taken me two weeks to put together an acoustic guitar progression, using my really backward way of sampling and deconstructing, I play it to a guy in my band, and he’s like, “Oh yeah, E, D, G. That’s simple.” I’m in awe of that. What actually seems to me to be complex and difficult comes to them as a really basic idea of playing music.
I had a lot of help from my label and management in putting the group together. When I went to meet with them for the first time in New York, I was just stunned at what they were capable of doing. The first time we met, we played music from old Liars albums that had never been performed live before, just because of the technical difficulties that they had no problem with. Suddenly, songs I’d written five or six years ago that only appeared on a record, we’re now performing live in front of an audience. In addition to the new album, there’s all this material from the past that’s now coming to life. I’ve really had an enjoyable experience with it that I wouldn’t have guessed when I was back in the forest.
Q: You needed that ease at this point.
A: I did, and it has helped me experience the album in a way that’s different. People used to ask me, “Is making songs a cathartic experience for you?” In the past, it really wasn’t. Somehow now, with all of these elements coming together, I feel like I’ve transitioned from a feeling of complete isolation and confusion and loss to empowerment and freedom. I’m really thankful.
LIARS performs at the Ballroom at the Outer Space in Hamden on Sept. 20 at 8 p.m., with Bambara opening. manicpresents.com.
