The Used 'Lies for the Liars' album

When they finished touring for their 2004’s In Love and Death, the members of platinum rock band The Used took a few well-deserved months off to decompress. Of course, it wasn’t completely relaxing. Guitarist Quinn Allman sat at home, played guitar and struggled through the last gasps of a dying relationship. And frontman, Bert McCracken, itching for a change of pace, moved from Orem, Utah to Los Angeles, a city by which he was both repulsed and compelled. Dismayed as he was by the artifice and trendiness of the place, his disgust provided an abundance of songwriting ideas.

“I met the most fake people I had ever come across on the whole planet,” McCracken says. “They’re all just liars, and they’re so used to doing it, half the time I don’t think they even know they’re lying. Being in that environment had a direct effect on the tone of this new record, which is a little more vicious, but in a strange way, also more loving and caring.”

There’s no question that Lies for the Liars is The Used’s most honest, emotional sonic exorcism. From “Pretty Handsome Awkward,” which addresses the celebrity of indulgence and consumption, to “Liar, Liar,” a microcosm for the universe of deception and insincerity, there’s a new sense of analysis and revelation to the band’s songs. But unlike the many artists that equate confessional with whiny and screamy, The Used remain articulate, diverse, dynamic and theatrical, writing songs that range from classical-tinged melodrama to thunderous, bombastic rock.

“Smother Me” is a delicate piano ballad that aches with vulnerability, “Pretty Handsome Awkward” straddles a hedonistic guitar riff and peaks with an undeniable refrain, and “Paralyzed” combines soulful vocals and funk groove into a purposeful rhythmic swagger.

Then there’s the experimental stuff: “The Bird and the Worm” incorporates vibrant strings and post-punk rhythms into a mélange of theatrics and desperation, “Find a Way” is surreal and quirky -- built around a loop of soda can opening, a typewriter bell, and assorted mouth noises. “Ripper” is a hybrid of pop melody and industrial, and the heart-on-sleeve melody of “Hospital” is embellished with delirious laughter, electronic drum and bass beats and urgent guitar stabs that that invoke visions of wailing sirens, hairpin turns and a state of semi-consciousness.

“We definitely didn’t want this one to be anything like our first or second record,” McCracken says. “So we wanted to experiment more than we ever had and take any new idea and run with it as far as we could.”

“We layered a lot of stuff to make it sound different,” adds guitarist Quinn Allman “We’d have a really good sketch of the songs from the beginning, then we’d add a bunch of stuff into it unplanned, without thinking. “So, there was a lot more of an unconscious way of conceiving the ideas.”

Clearly, Lies for the Liars is eclectic, multifaceted and exciting. One thing it’s not, however, is difficult to grasp. The songs all flow with cohesive energy and they’re assembled with enough care and experience to keep even the most unconventional parts from uprooting the flow of the music.

“We wanted the songs to be digestible, for sure,” Allman says. “They come right at you and there’s no meandering. But at the same time, it’s the most unconscious record we’ve ever made, and that’s why it’s so deep and personal.”

What really make the songs especially personal, of course, are McCraken’s imagistic lyrics. Still poetic, but no longer oblique, the lines are universally turbulent, impacting somewhere between hope and desperation. “I’m writing about basic, unavoidables in life -- trying to escape things that are inescapable,” he explains. “It’s all everyday stuff about life and death and contrasts about love and being in love and feeling love and how that can all really fuck you up.”

Regardless of subject matter, McCracken’s verse is riddled with wry observations and witty metaphors. “Liar, Liar” is about “how religion clashes with spirituality, honesty clashing with music and dishonesty ruining music,” “Hospital” views a breakneck ride in an ambulance as a comfortable excursion, in which you can be yourself without being judged and “Wake Up Dead” is a toast to things that go bump in the night.

“It’s a fun story about digging up bodies at the cemetery, and the bodies suddenly coming to life, but then realizing that you’re already dead, too,” McCracken says. “I watch a lot of horror movies, so I thought it would be cool to write a creepy story of my own.”

The Used started writing Lies for the Liars in early 2006, starting from a bottomless pile of riffs Allman had been toying with. Minutes after plugging in, the band was jamming away, feeding off the kind of spontaneity that would define the rest the record. The first album track they wrote was “The Ripper,” which features a powerful post-hardcore passage mostly conceived by McCracken. For the most part, ideas came quickly. “Pretty Handsome Awkward,” for instance, was written in less than an hour. “It really started off as a joke,” Allman says. Then this riff came together and took on its own life.”

Other songs were a bit more involved, like “The Bird and the Worm,” which evolved into a dramatic number that took on new life when the band added strings. “That song came from a rock thing Quinn brought to me, and we jammed on it at my house on piano for about three hours,” McCracken says. “Then we decided to take it in a different direction and make it almost overdramatic. There are a lot of bands doing this over-the-top, dramatic stuff, but The Used is the only one who can pull that off in this amazing way. And that’s because we’re completely honest the whole way through. We never do something that isn’t us.”

Joined by their new drummer, Dan Whitesides (ex-New Transit Direction and hometown friend of the band) The Used wrote and demoed 40 songs for the album. Then, The Used entered Foxy Studios in Los Angeles with producer John Feldmann and recorded their favorite 20 tracks, which they narrowed down to the 11 for the record. For the sake of expediency, Dean Butterworth, Feldmann’s regular studio drummer, recorded with the group.

“He played for Ben Harper and Morrissey and he can play anything,” McCracken says. “It was kind of more about timing then anything, and he’s a really good friend of Feldmann’s, so we went in with him and it worked out great.”

Lies for the Liars may be the latest and most exciting episode in the Used’s six-year career, but that’s not to downplay the band’s past history. The group began in Orem, Utah in 2001 with a dream, rough and tumble backgrounds and a handful of cathartic tunes that earned them a deal with Reprise Records. The label released their explosive, emotionally expressive self-titled album in 2002, and the band immediately started to tour. By the end of the cycle, they had played prime slots on Ozzfest, The Warped Tour and Projekt Revolution and received strong radio and video play thanks to songs like “The Taste of Ink” and “Box Full of Sharp Objects.”

In 2003, The Used released the CD and DVD package Maybe Memories, featuring unreleased tracks, live recordings, videos and behind-the-scenes footage, which kept fans at bay until the band’s second full album, In Love and Death, hit in late 2004. The more refined, highly melodic disc peaked at #7 on the Billboard album chart and the band toured extensively, including a stint on the first annual Taste of Chaos. Recently, The Used released the live CD and DVD Berth.

The new DVD was shot during a headlining show in Vancouver, British Columbia and provides a glorious second episode to the group’s video. Berth offers fans footage of the creation of In Love and Death, the subsequent world tour, and the making of Lies for the Liars and music videos for the Top 15 Modern Rock hits “Take it Away” and “All That I’ve Got.”

Currently, The Used are on the road with Whitesides, and Allman says they’re in top form. “We instantly clicked with Dan,” he says. “And now we’re the band we’re supposed to be. There’s never a mistake made, there’s never a wrong note. Together we’re all able to pull the best out of each other.”

Adds McCracken: “It feels like we’ve started a new chapter in our lives and that everything that’s yet to come will be our most exciting, most incredible experiences ever.”

If Lies For the Liars is, indeed, a new beginning, The Used are off to a tremendous start.

Bert McCracken – vocals
Quinn Allman – guitar
Jeph Howard – bass
Dan Whitesides – drums

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The Used - Lies for the Liars