Frank talk from the Liars, honest

ANGUS ANDREW doesn’t seem to care much about anything this week -- except making his next gig.

“Right now, I’m just trying to get to Albuquerque,” he says via cellphone in a van somewhere in Oklahoma.

The singer-guitarist for the Liars and his two bandmates, Aaron Hemphill and Julian Gross, are roughly halfway through a 26-city tour of North America in support of their third release for Mute Records, “Drum’s Not Dead,” and are running behind schedule.

And Andrew likes to be on time. Another thing the Australian-born ringleader of the Liars cares about, surprisingly, are music critics who hate his band.

“We’re not blind or deaf to reaction to our records,” he says. “It’s important to us to really try and listen to what people say about us.”

Luckily for Andrew, the buzz is mostly positive when it comes to his group’s latest offering.

The album, marked by taut minor-key melodies, rolling percussion via multiple miked drums fed through effects pedals, haunting falsetto vocals and shimmering pulses of Sonic Youth-style noise, have earned the trio accolades from indie-rock sources like Pitchfork Media (which gave the album a rare 9.0 rating).

But the critics were not always so kind to the Berlin-via-Brooklyn trio that formed in Los Angeles in 1999 (Andrew was a student at CalArts at the time).

Two years ago, Spin and Rolling Stone magazines savaged the Liars upon the release of “They Were Wrong, So We Drowned.”

“In a way we anticipated that sort of reaction,” Andrew says. “The reaction to the ‘Drowned’ record made us realize that it’s important to connect with your audience. Even though we’re still proud of that record, I think that the way the critics responded to that taught us a lesson. I guess that’s not a very cool thing to say, but you have to realize that you’re not simply making music for yourself.”

Such honesty is nothing new to the Liars, whom Andrew says are all about exploration.

Indeed, the band did risk a lot when it left the cozy confines of its fan base in Williamsburg to explore Berlin’s Kreutzberg district in 2003.

“I knew very few people in Berlin at the time,” says Andrew. “I [left Brooklyn] because I reached a 10-year point of living in America and that shocked me. That was around the time America was invading Iraq. Berlin was just the cheapest place I found in Europe and I was kind of looking to be alienated a bit.”

He confesses he “still doesn’t speak the language” but was able to “write freely” in Germany.

What the Liars came up with in Berlin, to be sure, maps the same sonic territory fans of experimental rock music are already familiar with -- their sound is hardly new. Bands including Can, the Birthday Party, Radiohead and Black Heart Procession have navigated similar terrain in the past.

Still, the Liars’ latest effort is an arresting melange of cacophonous beauty -- haunting and challenging all at once.

Tracks like “A Visit From Drum” off the Liars’ latest exemplify the band’s inventiveness. Dual tribal Taiko-style drums with rimshot flourishes underpin the song’s stark, minimalist groove that in the wrong hands might end up exploding into a full-on rocker. Instead, the song’s restraint results in the kind of triumph that overshadows the album’s weaker moments, such as “Drum and the Uncomfortable Can.”

Even if Andrew and his conspirators fail to take over alt-rock airwaves this year, he still has enough fans in the right circles to ensure that his band will continue to make underground waves. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, no strangers to mainstream success, have always been boosters of the Liars, and the hipster heroes chose the Liars to be one of several acts featured at last month’s All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in England.

In any event, the Liars don’t plan on a music scene without them anytime soon -- no matter what critics may say in the future.

Asked what he might do if the band doesn’t take off, Andrew simply says that’s “a world I haven’t envisioned yet.”

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Liars

Where: Troubadour, 9081 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood

When: 8 p.m. Saturday

Price: $12

Info: (310) 276-6168