by LORRAINE CARPENTER

Trucker hats, away! Stick a pointy black number on your head instead and dig the new direction of Liars, formerly critically adored for their "punk funk," currently "unlistenable," according to Spin. The Mirror begs to differ, but there's no doubt that Liars have changed.

After leaving the hipster mecca of Williamsburg, switching labels (Gern Blandsten for Blast First/Mute) and replacing their old rhythm section with an older friend and collaborator, drummer Julian Gross, the trio holed up in singer Angus Andrew's new New Jersey home to make their sophomore album, They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, a record that revolves around witches.

"There's folklore, there's fact, there's humour and there's also our own narrative based on children's stories," explains guitarist/songwriter Aaron Hemphill. "We were all reading books that involved witches, like the Narnia and Wizard of Oz series." (Liars are so into Oz that they once wrote a song to accompany a scene from the film, "Dorothy Taps the Toe of the Tinman," featured on the Liars/ Oneida split EP, Atheists, Reconsider.)

With fairy tales on the brain and (perhaps) supernatural forces at play deep in New Jersey's dark woods, where the band would often go walking at night to freak themselves out, Andrew and Hemphill dreamt up a song title, "Broken Witches." But before the tune was written, a Web search typo uncovered the legend of Germany's Brocken coven, accidentally providing the band with the core of their concept. The date of their discovery happened to be May 1, when witches are said to gather on Brocken Mountain, the same peak that inspired Mussorgsky's classical classic of Fantasia fame, "Night on Bald Mountain."

"We came across the song in our research, but none of us knew the piece from the title," says Hemphill. "Then it turned out to be our drummer's ring tone. Another freaky coincidence."

And, in turn, a freaky record that's a very deliberate departure from the band's white-hot 2001 debut, They Threw Us All in a Trench and Threw a Monument on Top - and don't expect to hear any "old" tracks live.

"We're proud of that album, but it's really old for us. It's expired." On the fresh album, the funky basslines are fewer and the shuddering pulses and densely stacked soundscapes sound better on headphones than on the dancefloor. "We don't feel like making fun dance music anymore. Current events changed that feeling," says Hemphill, confirming that this one-off concept isn't all about sorcery. Addressing the injustice of witch trials and the power of black arts, the record ricochets between the dour, the dire and the funny. The opening lines are, "I no longer wanna be a man!/ I wanna be a horse!/ Give me a tail!" The closing loop, meanwhile, is an unsettling sample of chirps and rumbles from the wild, one of the album's many sinister mantras - and you can read as much "Dick Cheney" into that as you like.

"We don't see our band as an effective political forum," says Hemphill, dismissing literally political lyrics. "If you wanna take it as a plain record, you can, if you wanna take it as a fun story about silly witches, you can, but if you also wanna take it as a subtle political comment - oh, yeah."

With guests at Cabaret on Tuesday, March 16, 9pm, $14

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