Liars Don't Understand Slam Poetry's Place In Olympics

It's the middle of February when I talk to Liars frontman Angus Andrews, and he's confused.

The source of this confusion is not how his band's new album, Sisterworld, leaked to the Internet more than three months early. It's also not why the group haven't achieved much success in his native Australia.

No, Andrews is confounded by Canadians — or at least the Canadians who put together the 2010 Olympic Winter Games' opening ceremony.

"I just don't know about the slam poetry reading," he says with a laugh. "And the violin guys were a little weird, too. How integral to the Canadian culture is weird violins?

"I liked it, though. I said to someone that it was almost like Canada was discovering its culture for the first time."

All kidding aside, Andrews is on the phone to discuss Sisterworld, Liars fifth studio album, which came out March 9. It's a brooding, intense piece of work that fuses the experimentalism of Drum's Not Dead and the electric precision of 2007's self-titled record.

The recording brought Andrews back to Los Angeles from Berlin, Germany, where he was able to record with bandmates Aaron Hemphill and Julian Gross in the same space, rather than relying on email to get the job done.

"Because this time we were all in L.A., it meant that obviously there was a bit more of a back and forth," Andrews says. "So I could write something and then ask Aaron to play some guitar on it or something and that could work out.

"On the last record, we were sending stuff through email and whatever. And that's all very nice, theoretically, the idea that one of you is on one side of the world and the other is on the other. I think we sort of tricked ourselves into thinking that it was a pretty awesome way to work.

"But you can't really beat the idea of everyone being in the same city and being able to call one another on a fairly regular basis."

We'll have a more extended Liars feature next week. In the meantime, here are Liars' tour dates:

March 18 Austin, TX @ Club Deville (South By Southwest Music Festival)
March 19 Austin, TX @ Antone's (South By Southwest Music Festival)
April 10 Los Angeles, CA @ El Rey Theatre
April 14 Washington, DC @ Rock N Roll Hotel
April 15 New York, NY @ The Bowery Ballroom
April 16 Philadelphia, PA @ First Unitarian Church Of Philadelphia
April 17 Boston, MA @ Paradise Rock Club And Lounge
April 18 Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall Of Williamsburg
April 27 San Francisco, CA @ Slim's
April 29 Portland, OR @ Hawthorne Theatre
April 30 Vancouver, BC @ The Venue
May 1 Seattle, WA @ Neumos
May 7 Minehead, England @ Butlin's Holiday Resort (All Tomorrow's Parties)
May 11 Padova, Italy @ Unwound
May 12 Milan, Italy @ Magnolia
May 13 Rome, Italy @ Init
May 14 Bologna, Italy @ Bronson
May 15 Lyon, France @ Le Marche Gare
May 16 Lausanne, Switzerland @ Le Romandie
May 18 Strasbourg, France @ La Laiterie
May 19 Paris, France @ Le Maroquinerie
May 20 Munich, Germany @ Kranhalle at Feierwerk
May 21 Berlin, Germany @ Volksbuehne
May 22 Hamburg, Germany @ Indra
May 24 Utrecht, Netherlands @ Tivoli De Helling
May 25 Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Trouw
May 26 Brussels, Belgium @ Le Botanique
May 27 London, England @ O2 Shepherds Bush Empire