Water Liars Water Liars

If you haven't listened to Water Liars, let the music be your introduction. Is it important to know that Bryant is from Mississippi and Kinkel-Schuster is from Arkansas, that they're shaped by the writers whose influence shines through in everything they make-Frank Stanford and Barry Hannah especially-and that their pain is the pain of the wretched and beautiful South. Sure, and it's all there in the songs. On "Vespers," Kinkel- Schuster sings, "When I left her house / It was snowing out / and I left her for the South / But who cares? / We don't want no one to see us cry. / No, darling, we'd rather die." These are songs about leaving and staying, about lost fathers and new loves, about distance and memory. These songs are a consideration of what Kentucky poet Joe Bolton called "a future that seems already to have acquired / The irrevocability of the past." These songs smell of autumn. These songs are the hugeness of rain, the heaviness of breath, the strangeness of cities. Light a cigarette and close your eyes-let these songs whiskey into you, let them brighten your blood, let them be endless in the night.