Search - Lies :: Resigned

The Lies are a very theatrical band. So much so that their newest album recalls 1970s sci-fi and action-film soundtracks, complete with strutting drums, staccato vocals, and sonorous washes of synthesizer that sound like the work of a band of renegade tuba players. Their music recalls the dirgelike sound of Joy Division, with metallic, monotone vocals over layers of ominous, oppressive instrumentation. The Lies' heavy, retro-futuristic sound is broken up all too infrequently by a tinkling piano intro or a Pavementesque vocal or guitar line; by and large, though, the album is 40 minutes of inadvertently parodic, goth-influenced post-punk. It mines the slim strip of territory between the more genuine-sounding B-sides and outtakes of Joy Division's Substance and the more energetic, synth-fueled work of Roger Joseph Manning Jr. and Brian Reitzall on Logan's Sanctuary. Not surprisingly, the Lies find nothing new. They are indie kids by current standards, and were still in diapers when the music that feeds their souls, the gloom-and-doom goth of the 1980s, was in its heyday. If Resigned is any indication, arriving late on the scene has left the band turning stones in search of originality in a field long fallow. --Sarah Sternau