Hailing from Houston, Texas, Liquid Casing are a band flavored with a southwestern soulfulness that’s as burning as the borderland sun. The progressive rock four-piece – inspired by the eclectic likes of Fugazi, The Mars Volta, and Miles Davis – follow up 2007’s An Empty Sparking Light with the full-length A Separate Divide, set to be released on June 25th. Ambitious not only in their sound but also their subject matter, Liquid Casing take listeners on a politically-charged ride through searing saxophones and guitar rifts as heavy as the history behind their lyrics. The album’s main motif is apparent in the title itself: the dividing power of borders. And in a place like Texas, there’s no doubt that division could be painfully alienating, a sentiment that singer Alvaro Rodriguez expresses all too knowingly.
In the first track off the album, “A Path of Footprints Forged in the Midnight Sun”, Rodriguez’s world-weary voice is defiant in the face of instrumental force, holding its own against the powerful percussion and thunderous electric guitar. Indeed, with lyrics like, “I’d make myself a stranger, risk this meager body / I’d cross any border, suffer in their absence,” it’s almost as if he’s empowered by the struggle against both sound and society. By “Checkpoints and Borders,” however, a sense of yielding is expressed in the softening of strings and Rodriguez’s doleful crooning: “Checkpoints to see where we belong, can’t you see I don’t belong? /My skin said it all; that border I just can’t cross.” Filled with sprawling instrumental landscapes and meaningful socio-political undertones, Liquid Casing’s A Separate Divide is an album that successfully transcends its borders.
