Trading My Life by Liar’s Academy (Review)

Former Strike Anywhere guitarist Matt Smith and Cross My Heart fallouts Ryan Shelkett (vocals) and Evan Tanner (drummer) combined their powers in the fall of 2000 to form Liar’s Academy. Several months later, they debuted with No News Is Good News on Equal Vision Records. I placed that recording on my top 30 while serving as music director at KSDJ in Brookings, SD. I can now remember thinking that Liar’s Academy was just OK. Not too threatening but not too mild, not too groundbreaking but not too generic. Those descriptions still apply.

Liar’s Academy isn’t too much anything. They rely more on — and this is appreciated if only because it is a break from the norm — Americana-tinged rock n’ roll akin to Dinosaur Jr., The Lemonheads, The Replacements, and early Soul Asylum, with Shelkett’s vox closely resembling Jakob Dylan’s. As a result, Liar’s Academy do break from the “Sunny Day Real Estate + Weezer” formula that hordes of bands today find so attractive to ape. The EP is short and rightly so as the songs are not meant to be delved into and dissected with further listens. The choruses become repetitive and do not lend themselves to repeated listenings. I think I counted the phrase “trading my life” on Trading My Life 17 times, which got old.

Trading My Life is OK and nice. But unfortunately for the band, when someone is using the words “OK” and “nice” to describe you or something in the environment, it just means that they can’t think of anything genuinely flattering to say. Trust me, I know… girls tell me this all the time.

Written by Jeffrey Ellinger.