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18
Thursday
What do you do when people suddenly wonder whether your rock band is full of doo-doo? If you’re in Liars, you ditch your scenester hellhole (New York City) for someplace cheaper (Berlin), and hope the change unblocks the strangeways, so to speak. The new digs apparently did refresh the trio, which had gone from being Coney Island darlings (2001’s aggro-funk They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top) to dwelling on the unofficial list of reasons why New York is annoying (2004’s witches-and-whatnot They Were Wrong, So We Drowned). Unburdened by expectations and heaped with Teutonic moods, this year’s Drum’s Not Dead is surprisingly good: It’s a spacey descendant of Kid A but with more drones, more noise, and fewer electronics—and it’s usually more engrossing than self-indulgent. The big question, for now, is whether those largely groove-free songs will be a snooze when Liars play with Apes at 8:30 p.m. at the Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW. $10. (202) 667-7960. (Joe Warminsky)