Liar (It Takes One to Know One)

The guitar work here is restless and angular, built on interlocking riffs that seem to argue with each other rather than harmonize. There's a theatrical bitterness running through the whole track — two vocalists trading lines like they're building a case in court, each one undercutting the other. The song moves through shifts in intensity with a kind of dramatic flair that owes as much to stage performance as it does to rock music. Lazzara's delivery is elastic, stretching syllables to breaking point and then releasing them. The lyric core is a confrontation with someone who has been caught in their own contradiction — the accuser who is equally guilty — and the music captures that mutual, slightly gleeful cruelty. It's a song for people who have ever enjoyed an argument they knew they'd eventually lose. A defining artifact of the Long Island emo scene, where wit and volume were equally prized.