Northern Liberties is a punk band formed in 2000 and named after a neighborhood in Philadelphia that none of the three members are from. Northern Liberties, the neighborhood, is a formerly collapsing industrial sector that has been “revitalized” into an overpriced hipster hellhole. Northern Liberties, the band, sounds like Lightning Bolt… just coarser, more distant, less concise, less nice, but brimming with comic spice.
Self-Dissolving Abandoned Universe is the band’s eighth LP and is more of what people like about the band ("people" being used in the royal "we" sense here). Angular post-punky chords, discordant clashing rhythms, inverted melodies, and reverby vocal work that sounds like it’s being inundated by killer gamma rays. There are a lot of twists and turns in these tracks, and they tend not to feel their length, especially the rangier offerings like “Infusorian Hymnal,” which sounds like a kaleidoscope of stars, and “Strangers Never Part” which is more like a Buick that's had its engine replaced by twelve human hearts, duct-taped together, and drip-fed a nitrous-saturated Monster engery drink blend that has been banned by the FDA. Blister bolts like speed-rock ripper “The Plot Thickens” sound like Zeke melting in a pool of radioactive slurry, while the vinegar pissing “Strangers Never Part” could pass for a full-metal slug of cotex annihilating psychokinetic blastwork, lab-tested and proven to penetrate the mystical armor of fuzz-warriors of the Oh Sees caliber. If what doesn't kill you makes you more alien to the world around you, then this album will make you the number #1 candidate for the next leaked Area 51 autopsy tape.
