Video: Liily, ‘Man Listening to Disc’

Matt Wallock on March 11th, 2022

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Just in time for their West Coast tour, which kicks off this weekend, L.A. quartet Liily are back with a new video for “Man Listening to Disc,” off their debut album “TV or Not TV,” out now via Flush Records. The video, directed by guitarist Sam De La Torre, shows the band – De La Torre, singer Dylan Nash, drummer Maxx Morando and bassist Charlie Anastasis — delivering a raucous, claustrophobic performance in a home studio, if you can call it that.

“If we do a performance video, we’re not going to do it with our instruments unplugged again,” De La Torre said. “The idea revolves around being honest by showing microphones, tripods, photographers, stills and camera operators. If we would have recorded the album ‘TV or Not TV’ on our own, this [represents] what that would’ve been like.”

While “TV or Not TV” wasn’t actually recorded in that manner, its 12 tracks share the video’s gritty theatricality. The album arrived in October as Liily’s most ambitious statement yet, with the quartet topping antsy, angular art-rock and rowdy, seething post-punk numbers with emo, glitch and hardcore touches. Five thousand miles away, in the U.K., Black Midi are working in a similarly severe, freewheeling mode — and like Black Midi, Liily are known for their explosive live shows. All of this is to say that L.A. has finally found a satisfying answer to London’s Gen Z hardcore set. Meanwhile, the band also cites the Birthday Party, The Fall, Moss Icon and Unwound as influences.

“I think it’s important that artists shouldn’t subscribe [to genre],” Nash told NME back in August. “The bands that we really like that are technically rock are taking tropes and reversing them, and turning it upside down and flipping it inside out.” That recipe — twisting rock tropes into new forms — serves Liily well on “Man Listening to Disc” and characterizes their approach throughout “TV or Not TV.”

||| Watch: The video for “Man Listening to Disc”