Sighs Trapped by Liars (album)

Sighs Trapped by Liars
Studio album by The Red Krayola with Art & Language
Released	September 25, 2007
Recorded
Studio
Label	Drag City
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Track listing

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Fairest of All"	2:52
2.	"Jumping Through the Mirror"	4:42
3.	"Laughing at the Foot of the Cross"	4:15
4.	"Il Ne Reste Qu'a Chanter"	4:34
5.	"Hostage"	3:00
6.	"Jerry Fodor's Story"	2:50
7.	"The Big Vacation"	3:47
8.	"Four Stars: The Ideal Crew"	8:13
9.	"Igor Zabel's Song"	3:53
10.	"A Pest"	3:24
11.	"Perfection"	2:16
12.	"Forty Thousand Words on a Chair"	3:20
13.	"Sighs Trapped by Liars"	4:41

Background

• "Sighs Trapped by Liars" is a series by Art & Language that began in the 1990s
• The title is "based on a pornographic S&M passage which in original reading was 'Thighs wrapped by wires...'"
• Many of the songs adapt texts or ideas that frequently appear in Art & Language works
• Previewed in a Whole Foods
• Art & Language wrote a script for The Jackson Pollock Bar about the album: Art & Language Sings a Song

• 
  Poster
• 
  10 Posters, 2018

Cover art

The cover was designed by Art & Language based on a work from their series There Were Sighs Trapped by Liars. Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden replaced portraits of themselves with portraits of vocalists Elisa Randazzo and Sandy Yang.

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  There Were Sighs Trapped by Liars, 2000

Personnel

Vocals

• Elisa Randazzo
• Sandy Yang

Instruments

• Noel Kupersmith - bass
• Jim O'Rourke - acoustic guitar, harmonica, backing vocals, synth bass
• Mayo Thompson - acoustic guitar, piano
• John McEntire - drums
• Tom Watson - electric guitar, bass

Technical

• Jim O'Rourke - mixing, engineer
• Elisa Randazzo - engineer
• John McEntire - engineer
• Scott Benzel - engineer
• Roger Seibel - mastering

Cover art

• Art & Language - cover, design, photography
• Dan Osborn - layout
• Arthur Ou - photography

Reviews

Pitchfork

September 18, 2007

Mike Powell

The Sunday Times

October 21, 2007

Stewart Lee

In the late 1960s, Mayo Thompson's Red Krayola contracted Texan psychedelia into childlike drones, before mutating to survive a further 40 years. In the 1970s, they soundtracked sociopolitical sloganeering with the conceptualists Art & Language. Today, the partnership renewed, Krayola back two hesitant and foul-mouthed chanteuses singing uncharacteristically pretty yet typically unfocused tunes. Il ne reste qu'a chanter finds the Velvet Underground sleepwalking through a Weimar cabaret; Jerry Fodor's Story pitches supper-club jazz phrasing into an improvisatory void; Perfection is a deteriorated Vegas ballad. The art terrorists return, inebriated, tangled in feather boas.

Map

Winter 2007

N.C.