The new Missouri-Mississippi musical duo, Water Liars, is comprised of St. Louis songwriter, vocalist and guitarist Justin Kinkel-Schuster (also of Theodore) and Oxford drummer, producer and multi-instrumentalist, Andrew Bryant, the new musical duo got together on a whim last year in Pittsboro, Mississippi, and with only one microphone and three days, recorded the nine-track album Phantom Limb.
The album is a mix of folk, rock, psychedelia, blues-oriented guitar songs, touched up by indie sensibilities that remind us of The Shins, and marked by the innate lo-fi quality (i.e. one microphone ) that reveals static, hissing, and speaker bleeps and cracks, which all somehow work together to make it sound as opportunistic, unpolished and organic as any album recorded in three days by talented musicians could possibly be.
There is not much information on the web about Water Liars, perhaps part of the reason is that the duo only recently renamed themselves from Phantom Limb (likely for the magnificent album/song by The Shins) to Water Liars.
Note: Santa Cruz peeps: It is with great excitement and anticipation that we are happy to tell you that the spectacular band, The Shins, will be performing at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium on April 22! That’ll surely sell out.
The lead-off track, “$100” starts out with a feedback-heavy electric harmonica followed by emotive, sluggish acoustic guitar playing and anguished vocals of a love lost. From there, the track eventually evolves into an overbearing brew of psychedelic, spaceship sound effects which end up nuking the acoustic aspect altogether.
The song is not catchy nor memorable – other than for its discordant, trippy part, but someone it makes us want to hear more from the three-day recording session. It’s not the best song for the label and duo to have released from the debut, but it sure does represent the raw, organic nature of the recording session. In the meantime, here is the video for the track called “Dog Eaten.”
Phantom Limb – Dog Eaten (A Show Me Show) from Jarred Gastreich.
While the album has so far not received widespread coverage on the web (probably because they are so new), Popmatters has an in-depth, positive review worth reading. We suspect that once Phantom Limb is heard by more people, there will be a demand for a second pressing, and at that time, there will probably be more reviews in more higher-profiled music sites. But a signal that the duo is building interest is the fact that they recorded a session with Daytrotter on Friday (March 2nd). No word yet on when the session will be published, but we’re looking forward to hearing it.
“$100” – Water Liars from Phantom Limb via Misra Records – released Feb. 29th
Eleven Music Magazine recently wrote up a glowing review of the band’s CD release performance at the venue Off-Broadway in St. Louis. The duo are currently on a cross-country tour. There is also a Georgia band of the same name.
