The Born Liars, Ragged Island

After a lot of thought, I’ve realized that the thing I like the most about the Born Liars, what makes ’em stand out from the crowd of loud, punkish, garage-y rockers, is, well, that they’ve got heart. It sounds sappy, I know, but it’s the truth; they’re real, they’re genuine, and there’s no posing in sight. By which I mean there’s no blazing-hot rock songs on Ragged Island that’re about rockin’ fast and not much else, all attitude and no substance. The Born Liars, by contrast, play and sing like a real bunch of hard-drinkin’, broken-hearted, bitter guys, the kind of crew you’d find hanging out at the local watering hole; they’re the real deal.

Which explains why the songs on Ragged Island ring true the way they do. The whole album reads like one big long love-gone-wrong letter from a guy to the girl who broke his heart (is that the “Ragged Island,” itself, maybe; some kind of metaphorical message for lonelineless and isolation?), and anybody who’s been there will know the feeling. It’s bloody, bitter, and alternately loose-sounding and tightly focused, like the angry, sloppy drunk at the bar who thinks you spilled his beer and starts swinging without a second’s hesitation. Singer/guitarist Jimmy Sanchez sings like he’s hurting, and like any wounded animal, he’s liable to strike out in pain at anybody nearby.

The album’s overall tone matches beautifully, too, and is a big part of why I’m finding that more and more, I truly love these guys — unlike Exit Smiling, which was a good disc but suffered (to my ears, anyway) from slightly anemic, too-clean, not-rough-enough production, Ragged Island has that warm, mid-fi hum to it, like a record you’ve dug out of that box of records from the ’60s you found in your uncle’s attic. The sound meshes perfectly with the raw, scabs-ripped-open soul-baring of the lyrics, all fuzzy bass, sharp edges blunted with smoke. It’s barroom-ready, drinking-in-your-beer music.

With this album, I think the Liars have really hit their stride — or, at least, they’ve finally managed to capture it on tape. They suck in all the oldest of the old-school garage-rock influences, from The Standells to The Lyres (especially on the quiet, contemplative “Quiet Lives”) to Chuck Berry (the speeding, rockabilly-ish “Fannin Street”), and what comes out ends up resembling nobody so much as themselves. They sound like they’ve skipped a generation or something, reaching back further than most of their contemporaries for the stuff they like.

I’ve raved about highlight track “Don’t Tell Me, I Know” before, so I’ll skip the bulk of that here except to say that this is a great fucking song, one that I haven’t been able to dig out of my head since I first threw the band’s last 7″ on the turntable. It’s an awesomely cutting, dismissive brushoff of a song by somebody who really doesn’t give a shit what anybody else thinks. I was surprised to stumble across a close rival for the absolute best song of the album, though, with “How It Gets At Night.”

By way of contrast with most of the rest of the songs on here, it almost comes off upbeat, with jangly, quasi-Latin guitars that bring to mind Springsteen’s “Rosalita,” and it’s sweet and weary and broken-down, nearly pleading with whoever Sanchez is singing to to not be too brutal this time. It’s probably the most genuinely sad, downtrodden thing the band’s ever done, and it’s a beautiful, refreshing moment for that.

The band revs back up and rolls onwards from there, blazing along with punkish fury ’til the final roaring stomp “Get Me Home,” and I find myself scratching my head and wondering: have I really already have found one of 2009’s best albums barely a month into the new year. Holy crap…