Lié

A white tile dungeon, an ebon crack in a wall and a tiny pair of gleaming yellow eyes are all Vancouver post-punk trio lié need to creep up the scene in their new video for "Pire."

On the performance side of things, we see the band whomping out an adrenalized assault of doomy-but-driving goth-punk, replete with sinisterly spiralling six-string licks and ghostly moans.

The more theatrical elements of the video have bassist Brittany hanging out in her own personal subterranean hell, fixating on a fissure in the wall apparently containing a creature of the night. Her descent into madness only amplifies once she tries to catalogue her discovery by wildly scrawling cryptic glyphs onto a concrete floor. Gaze at the horrors of her isolation-rooted insanity down below.
- Exclaim

I'd previously written about post-feelings arthouse project //ZOO and with good reason: the tracks covered a new wave of darkness I felt needed addressing in a particularly morose time in history, in life, in the world. The followup to those feelings comes from a place of not just darkness but aggression, too, through the three-piece project of //ZOO's frontwoman Ashlee Luk, a cold punk effort that grinds all inner monologues to a halt. It's fast and terrifying and strong, and if you're of the meek mien, could even come off as abrasive or intimidating. But really what the Canadian three-piece known as Lié are doing is giving us music for the times we're living in. In under three minutes, the group manages to shine through guitar and vocals as sharp as a tablesaw, notably covering the malaise of a lost Vancouver punk with a voice edging to be heard.

You can stream the track "Seams" below, and look out for its official release on Function Operate Records in the near future. Addtionally, Lié will be going on a West Coast tour, the poster for which you can ogle at below the embed. - Impose

IN THE SELF-PROCLAIMED “cold punk” band Lié, guitarist Ashlee Luk screams and sulks up a storm, alongside bassist Brittany Westgarth (also of Koban) and drummer Kati J. The trio’s eponymous debut, released in January, howls and swipes like a cornered animal, its spiky guitars and goth-shuffle beats creating the perfect soundscape for Vancouver’s shadowy back alleys and grimy punk venues alike.... - Georgia Straight

Vancouver, BC, is having a bit of a musical outbreak, and tonight's show features two bands from our prolific neighbors to the north. Lié are making some solid post-punk stompers, staying danceable while taking cues from their '80s gothic brethren. - Seattle Stranger

"Lié were next, sounding very much like Sonic Youth covering Siouxsie and the Banshees, tearing through their songs at a screaming pace. They could easily have ended up sounding horribly muddy and sloppy, but their set was none of those things. It was the exact opposite, in fact." - Discorder Magazine

"Lié are an all female Vancouver, BC based dark punk trio. With elegance, lié craft moody intellectual punk rock rhythms while still maintaining raw aggression." - Function Operate

Vancouver punk trio lié are going out of 2014 with a blackened bang, having just proffered a full-length stream of their manic debut LP, Consent.

The bulk of the nine-song set blitzes along on a busy one-two polka beat, energized even further by the furious, frack-attack six-stringing of Ashlee Luk. Throughout the LP, the guitarist trades mic duties with bassist Brittany West, analyzing political, sexual and personal politics on fiery, scattershot salvos like "Success" ("This life was never built on faith / We cheat, we lie, we fuck just to get on top").

You'll find a stream for the set down below, while it can be purchased over on Bandcamp. A physical release through That's Cool Records is forthcoming. - Exclaim!

This isn’t too surprising of a theory, but it’s basically a law of nature that when the world is going to shit, music is at its best. Think back to the turbulent ’60s, or the impact the Thatcher Regime had on punk’s first big wave, or the latest assault on women’s rights that has caused legions of righteously angry women to make their voices heard up on stages across the world. But where groups like Perfect Pussy present a near wordless, primal articulation of that frustration, Vancouver’s Lié are viciously clear, with Ashlee Luk’s forboding vocals and jagged guitar cutting through the murky low end provided by Britt West and Kati J with precision and focus. On their debut album Consent, Lié want you to hear every note of rage as they effortlessly develop an intriguingly fresh post-punk sound, a well-bred descendant of Siouxsie and the Banshees’ shadowy angularity and A-Frames industrial clangor. It’s a debut that refuses to be heard in the background, commanding attention from start to end as it carves out its own unique sonic space.

Outside of the sharpness of their audio assault, Lié’s other notable feature is their knack for emphasizing the explosiveness of their sound through clever arrangements that juxtapose the throaty richness of Luk’s voice with the scratchy aesthetic of her guitar. Most of the Siouxsie and the Banshees’ elements of Lié’s sound come strictly from Luk, who has both Siouxsie Sioux’s commanding vocal presence and Steve Severin’s propensity for unleashing amplified maelstroms. The album starts with West and Kati J providing a dirge of a bassline and a primal beat respectively before Luk kicks “Rat River” off in full with a call and response structure with herself. It isn’t long before the song build into “Casual Embrace” and takes on a more constant noise approach akin to the middle stretch of Sonic Youth’s Sister, all swirling cymbals and guitar stabs, Luk’s voice shifting between a monotonous chant and a furious wail.

[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=2632590580 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small track=1471311271]



When Lié up the tempo on “Capture Bonding,” the Wipers end of their influences is clearer, particularly in the psych-surf texture her guitar takes on, and the song’s climactic “No future! No future! No future!/No heroes!” mantra cheekily references the more traditionalist punk of the Sex Pistols and the Stranglers. “Broken” also features an amped up tempo, but here West’s bass gets the starring role, doing the bulk of the chord work with a fuzzed out, trebly tone that brings to mind Klaus Fluoride’s contributions to the Dead Kennedys as Luk sticks mostly to chimy riffs and bursts of noise. Luk’s tone, both vocally and on guitar, serves as a unifier for the group, making the sound of Consent immediately recognizable regardless of context, but West and Kati J’s eagerness to experiment with their own approaches and sounds keep the album from sounding monotonous or quickly wearing thin and thus keeps them from running into the issue Savages did when they transitioned from EPs to a full length.

Even without that sonic flexibility, though, Luk knows her way around a rebel chant and her lyrics are tailor made for sloganeering. There’s the third wave feminism angle of “Success,” for instance, with its unapologetic declaration that “We cheat, we lie, we fuck/Just to get on top,” making it clear that no woman should hesitate to do what it takes to achieve her goals let alone have to defend those actions. The song’s title may seem cheeky, but Lié aren’t making judgment calls, they’re demanding acceptance of their tactics, punching their way through any obstacles getting in the way of what success means to them. The copy that introduces the band on their American label That’s Cool Records’ Bandcamp page further emphasizes this as it notably avoids comparing Lié to any riot grrrl or current gen punk bands fronted by women, instead referencing testosterone heavy acts like Black Flag and Shellac.

[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=2632590580 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small track=3580708628]

But Lié’s most incendiary moment comes in the form of a song even an act as bold as Shellac couldn’t possibly do justice to, with the head on rape confrontation in “Sorry.” Told from the perspective of a woman calling out and taking down a friend’s rapist, “Sorry” forces the listener to experience the frequently unmentioned side effects of rape, as the perpetrator “fills the faces in her dreams,” brutalizing the victim not just physically but emotionally too. The fiercest criticism within “Sorry” is aimed at the notion that we should feel sympathy for these perpetrators too, with the song forgoing a chorus in favor of a breakdown, the guitar slicing the air in atonal bursts as Luk repeats “You’re sorry/So sorry?” with scathing faux-pity before the band moves into a terrifying, near robotic mantra of “It’s not your fault/it’s not your/fault” that ultimately reaches its climax with a nerve shattering vocal outburst from Luk.

Lié undoubtedly recorded Consent before the debacle of Rolling Stone’s UVA story, so “Sorry” has unfortunately taken on a new, more tragic relevance, with the “It’s not your fault” repetition gaining more complicated extra layers of meaning. Consent is fearless in its attack on the stereotypes and dismissals that hold back women but it’s also fully aware of how hopeless things can seem, how every day brings new attempts to undo the progress women have made. There is no good that comes from the current political landscape’s war on women’s rights, but it’s at least a little easier to believe that strides will be made knowing that more groups like Lié’ are emerging to inspire and stir up listeners, and while Consent isn’t going to lose its topicality any time soon, there is also a hopefulness in the message, a demand for listeners to harness the power of their frustration and anger. - Loser City

Lié, 'Casual Embrace'

Cold, noisy, furious and unsettling are all words we’d use to describe Consent, the new EP from Vancouver punk trio Lié. And we mean all of those things in the best way possible. — Chris Dart - CBC