Liars' new album, Mess, comes out this Tuesday and it is a miraculous work--both a continuation and extension of the ideas and sounds on WIXIW and a turn towards something new and weird (if there's anything predictable about this band, it's the fact that they are driven to keep pushing themselves). "Brats" from WIXIW is the closest sonic forerunner for the songs on Mess--dark and sloppy dance music, creepy and menacing in the way that Liars' music usually is.Where WIXIW was marked by some class of diagnosable sadness, Mess is playful, mischievous, funny, and goofy (and somewhat sinister, but that should go without saying); WIXIW was, in parts, so bleak that it was difficult to listen to it very often, and in that sense was a good mimetic companion for times when you might feel that same kind of second-by-second despair. Mess is more engaged with the world: there's confidence bordering on imperiousness in these songs, and that makes this album the band's most engrossing beginning-to-end listen since Drum's Not Dead (which is not to say the other albums weren't amazing, but there were always one or two dead spots on each of the past few).Liars have been such a great and innovative band for so long now that I think it's easy to forget just how talented they are. When you listen to something like "Mess on a Mission" (or "Boyzone" and "Darkslide" especially on the new album) you can hear the effort they've made to find and utilize new sounds--this is a band that makes a habit of experimentation, recording and manipulating noises born from unending curiosity and happy accidents. It's pretty incredible to see a band that's been around for 14 years maintain this level of artistic ambition.You can still listen to Mess in its entirety over at NPR for a little while. If you want to feel what it's like to be simultaneously charmed and freaked out by a song, just listen to those first two minutes of "Mask Maker."[BUY Mess]