Liars and Prayers is a deeply emotional work, with songs full of loss, confusion and regret, colored by the political malaise that’s currently affecting our country and the world. Other tunes are more personal, dedicated to friends that have recently passed away. The music rocks, but there are elements of cabaret music and classic torch songs, a hint of early R&B, and wide-open arrangements that give the album a cinematic feel. The music intensifies the emotional impact of Zedek’s lyrics that seem to address a tragedy that’s all pervasive but unnamed or perhaps unnamable, although some songs are more straightforward.
Analog has something that’s missing with digital. It’s like looking at the reflection of a person in a mirror instead of the person. The image is the same, but there’s an intangible quality that’s missing in the mirror image.
“Do You Remember” recalls the national trauma of 9/11, with a blend of acoustic and electric guitars creating a restrained tension while Coughlin’s drumming alternates between violent fills and minimal accents that bring to mind a ticking clock. The music moves between chaotic noise and quiet passages that convey the silent sound of shock produced by overwhelming grief. “I was going down to New York from Boston to rehearse on the morning of 9/11,” Zedek recalls. “I was on a bus that goes from Boston’s Chinatown to New York’s Chinatown. Very few people knew about it except the Chinese. The radio was blasting and people were upset, but it was all in Chinese. Finally a couple of people who spoke English told me what was going on. They’d closed all the bridges to the city, so finally a bunch of us got off the bus and walked over the Third Avenue bridge. That day and the next all airplanes were grounded. There was an eerie silence in the sky. I never consciously notice how loud the planes are, but when that sound was gone, it was completely weird. The music reflects that silence.”
“Body Memory” was written for Zedek’s friend Lisa King, who passed away after a long, painful illness. “Lisa had a painful condition that contributed to her death. What do you do when your body is a source of pain instead of a source of pleasure? You get a lot of drugs that may help, but which keep you outside of yourself. It’s hard to watch someone go through that.” A slow repeating guitar figure blossoms into flurries of tortured 32nd notes that imply the release one feels after enduring a long period of affliction, a release that may be as frightening as the pain.
“Begin to Exhume” closes the album on a darkly humorous note. It’s obviously about George W. Bush’s ability to avoid the unpleasant facts of life without ever losing his irritating smirk. The band wails with Zedek’s guitar, leading the charge into a swirling turmoil of anger and hopelessness. Then the music abruptly stops and the album is over. “That desperate sound conveys the feeling I’ve had for the last eight years,” Zedek says. “His re-election was almost enough to make we want to give up.” But instead of giving up, Zedek looked the beast in the eye and wrote this album, another cathartic blast of edgy rock and carefully chosen words that challenge us to do likewise. “I spend a lot of time on lyrics,” Zedek confesses. “Sometimes there are torturous months revising and revising. I think about what I’m saying and how I say it carefully, and even then I may not be 100% satisfied with it. It may be grammatically wrong, but when you’re writing words that are meant to be sung, you have to find the balance between the rhythm, the way the word sounds, and its meaning. Some of the stuff I write on a piece of paper might look cool or clever, but when I sing it, it doesn’t sound right. I print the lyrics on the vinyl record jacket and on my website because I don’t enunciate that clearly, but they’re not meant to be read. They’re meant to be heard.”
– j. Poet