Smoke & Mirrors: Little Liar Marks New EP Release with Multi-State Tour

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Buffalo band Little Liar will be dropping its latest EP at midnight Thursday on streaming platforms. Titled ‘Smoke & Mirrors,’ the band will then embark on a 10-day tour through multiple states. The band officially kicks things off Thursday night with a show at Rock & Roll Heaven in West Seneca with Sliver, Call Me Disaster and Eye Opener before leaving the next morning for shows in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Tennessee, Virginia and Pennsylvania. We met recently with Little Liar’s Austin Reese (vocals, guitarist) and Matt Levulis (lead guitarist) for a wide-ranging discussion on the band’s new record, its tour, songwriting, sobriety, navigating Buffalo’s scene and growing together as a band. It was a great talk. Please read our story below. — Photos provided by band.)

1120 PRESS: Thanks for speaking with us! Things are busy for you guys right now. You have a new EP dropping (at midnight April 10) and an upcoming tour. Where’s everything stand at the moment?

AUSTIN REESE: Everything’s coming together. I’m breathing easier. (laughs) We just finished putting the last few edits on the last few tracks on the songs we haven’t released yet as singles for what will be our new five-song EP.

MATT LEVULIS: Yeah, we’ve mainly been working on wrapping up the EP and getting ready to play out of town. We just played a big show at Rec Room. That was a ton of fun and getting to headline for After Dark is always a huge opportunity. And now we’re ramping up for our tour — getting transportation ready, getting merch ordered, getting everything squared away and everything locked up to go out and promote the new EP.

1120: Tell us about the new record. What can people expect?

AUSTIN: Well, you got a little bit of a taste from the two singles we released: ‘Killjoy’ and ‘The Devil in Your Eyes.’ I think the last few songs people are gonna hear are going to be a little bit refreshing because on the two singles we released we kind of stepped away from ‘Liquor Lust & Anguish’ (the band’s previous EP). I feel like we returned to that with the last few songs.

MATT: ‘Taste of Love’ off the new record kind of gives that sleazy, dirty ‘Little Liar vibe.’ You get kind of that gloomy, dark sound on another track, ‘Hold Me Under.’  You could compare it to ‘What If This Is Love?’ (from ‘Liquor Love & Anguish’)

1120: You said you have some songs on the new EP that kind of stray away from what people might expect. We’re always interested in the approach when artists sit down to write and record a new release. Was it part of your aim or objective to kind of take things in a different direction and or was that just a natural evolution?

AUSTIN: I’ve been pretty selfish with the songwriting up to this point. I don't really listen to a lot of hard rock music right now. But my roots are there. So, it's always going to come out that way. I write some songs that are only for an acoustic guitar and vocals, and I wouldn't bring them to a Little Liar practice to show the guys. Like, ‘this isn't a Little Liar song.’ But something like ‘Killjoy’ definitely has more of an alternative rock, kind-of-indie vibe. I don't really know exactly how to explain it, but it's definitely a departure from ‘Liquor Lust & Anguish,’ which was almost exclusively kind of ‘90s rock. So, I’m glad we sort of modernized some of the sound a bit. But then, like we said, ‘Taste of Love’ in particular, one of the new songs you’ll be hearing soon, definitely has that Alice-in-Chains feel.

MATT: I've been saying since we wrote it: It's like if you took ‘Down’ from Stone Temple Pilots and ‘Love, Hate, Love’ from Alice in Chains and kind of mashed them together.

1120: You guys have developed your own sound in terms of what you’re known for on the scene. Now that you’ve been around a little while, do you ever feel boxed in by the sound you've created?

AUSTIN: I won't allow it. (laughs) No, I don't even like the term hard rock, honestly.

MATT: We have a lot of other influences too, including alternative influences.

AUSTIN: I feel like even ‘Killjoy’ was kind of a push. I was like, ‘Alright, Matt, bear with me. I know this isn't quite up your alley.’

MATT:  I'm the ‘very hard-rock, roots-rock guy.’

AUSTIN: Derek, our drummer, he doesn't necessarily have a broad range of music that he likes to listen to. He kind of just goes with the flow and he's cool with whatever. And Dash, our bassist, has a little bit more of an eccentric taste and he's all over the board. So, he and I kind of have a better understanding of like: ‘Well, we could do all this different kind of stuff and make it sound like us.’ I mean, it's always going to sound like us because we are us. But I like the range that we have right now, between a song like ‘Truth Hurts’ from Liquor Lust & Anguish’ which is like more of a punky song, to ‘Dirty Broke Kid’ which is straight ‘90s rock, and then ‘Killjoy,’ which is something a little more modern, kind of like Arctic of Monkeys/Caged the Elephant.

MATT: Austin’s been good for me because up until I joined this band, I had a very closed perspective in terms of what I wanted to do musically. He's kind of opened up my perspective to different styles of music. So, we had those growing pains, I guess. ‘Killjoy,’ at first, I was not the biggest fan of because I'm very ‘all gas, no brakes.’ But there are songs that have been a little bit slower and that I've fallen in love with throughout time. Eighties power ballads — I've always been huge on. And there's a song ‘Grave Dancer’ by Velvet Revolver. I’m a huge fan of that one. So, I've kind of evolved. If it's got raw emotion and a ‘genuine feel,’ I can get behind it because then I can kind of connect with it and build myself around it.

1120: Isn't it funny how bands somehow can make it work even though they’re made up of members who are all into different styles of music?  

AUSTIN: But I think if we had a Venn diagram, there's like a good chunk of stuff that would fall in the middle.

MATT: Oh absolutely. And that helps.

1120:  How do you think your live sound differs from the recorded sound? There’s a different sense we take away from the band when we see you live compared to when we listen to your music on Spotify.

MATT: We actually just discussed this the other day. That’s funny…

AUSTIN: We love playing live. We haven't had an experience yet with recording where we actually get to do that — play live together. That might be something we experience, and experiment with, in the future. But when we're up on stage, and all together …

MATT: Yeah, that’s when the energy is there. And the big thing for us is that’s something we’d love to capture and bring to a record. There are some upcoming plans to do some stuff, but we’re not ready to talk about it just yet. But I feel like even the new batch of songs has a certain energy to them that even ‘Liquor Lust & Anguish’ didn't. But definitely, in the future, like Austin said, I'd love to do that live recording.  

1120: Who did you guys work with on the EP?

MATT: We worked with our buddy Brad Guenther from Phantom Studios. He’s down in Springville and he does killer work. He's a great, great producer. He knows us very well and he knows our sound. So, he's able to help pull stuff out of us, which we really didn't have while recording ‘Liquor Lust & Anguish.’ As much as I love that record, I feel like if there was somebody who kind of knew us a little bit better, they could have pulled more out of us.

1120: What do you think Brad pulled out of the band?

AUSTIN: What was nice was having some room to write while we were in the studio. So, like any little elements that he was throwing in as we were going that kind of inspired a new part, we could fiddle with that for a little bit. We weren't on an hourly rate. So, he was just working with us song-by-song and we could take our time and just have fun recording.

MATT: Brad’s a musician himself. He plays in the bands Lost Artifacts and Automatic Overdrive. He can hear a lot of stuff, so if we were missing something he knew what to add either effect-wise, or he’d throw in some reverb or some delay and stuff like that. He knows us and knows what we're capable of. And he would be like, ‘you can do better.’ We're good friends with Brad and he always does good by us and looks out for us. He's just such a good dude and he wants us to succeed.

1120: So, you guys have been around for a while now. What do you think you've

learned about navigating the Buffalo scene that you didn't necessarily know starting out?

MATT: I think — being the guy who does all the booking and stuff — just accepting that there are certain people who are not gonna like you for whatever reason, and that's well and fine. But at the end of the day, it's all about building relationships and not over saturating your market. And at some point, you're gonna have to kiss some asses to get places and that's just how it's goes. That's how the industry has always been. But there's some great people in this scene who I love to play with, and I love to interact with. So, I think a lot of it is, just don't over saturate yourself and build good relationships, and stay and listen to all the bands when you're playing a show. You know, give everybody a shot and be nice and be a good person.

1120: How do you think you've grown as a band over this time?

MATT: I think we've just gotten a ton tighter. You know, I think we've become basically each other's best friends. Like, we do almost everything together. We see each other two times a week. You know, it's just impossible not to, and this goes back to Austin influencing me musically: When I came into this band, I was a Guns N' Roses, Velvet Revolver guy. I really wasn't even into grunge music that much because nobody really brought it to my attention. I was raised on Rush, I was raised on Led Zeppelin, I was raised on all the prog and classic rock bands. And I think it's just each of us influencing each other, having those different musical tastes kind of come together to become this one unique product.

1120: So, you guys don't want to kill each other yet?

MATT: No. Check back in on us when we come back from tour after we’ve been stuck in an RV together for 10 days. (laughs)

1120: Tell us about the tour. How did it come together and how are you guys feeling about it?

MATT: It was tough to put together. We're pretty much considered a local band. We’ve played Erie, we've played Ohio, we've played Hamilton, but that's all within kind of this general sphere of areas that local Buffalo bands go play. So, I was out of my comfort zone being the guy who does the booking. I'm like reaching out and scouring social media. I had to learn about these different scenes and how they work and what venues are good, and what venues are not. And this being our first tour, you gotta take what you can get. So, like, we’re gonna be playing on Music Row in Nashville, but we're not gonna be playing the nicest bar on Music Row. (laughs). But it's still cool and a lot of it was just probably a thousand emails going out, back and forth, and bugging people. We had some states in mind that we wanted to hit. Like my favorite bands go to Grand Rapids all the time. So, I'm like, Grand Rapids would be a cool place. Nashville's obviously Music City, and I feel like we'd kind of fit in there in terms of being refreshing.

AUSTIN: One of our favorite artists is also from Nashville: Tyler Bryant & the Shakedown.

MATT: Yeah. They’re a big influence. And then we had people reaching out to us from Richmond. So, I'm like, ‘all right, we have to go to Virginia. People are asking us to go here.’ This is how you start to build a base. Erie, Pa. we go to all the time. We have kind of a little bit of a base growing there. So that was easy. Indiana was just kind of — well, I wanted to go to Chicago or that general area. Nobody was getting back to me. So, I was just kind of trying to find a connector between Grand Rapids and Tennessee and Indiana was right on the way. I started checking venues out there and we were able to be booked with some cool bands at a venue called Wrong Side 812. It's an outdoor venue, so hopefully the weather's good for us. But, yeah, this was a process and the planning for this started around this time last year and it took about year to get everything squared away.

1120: Is there anything you guys are hoping to achieve with this tour, or is it just about the experience?

AUSTIN: For me personally, I'm sober now. I'm just like giving it everything I got, and it feels so good. I'm gonna do this every single day we’re on the road and I'm just looking forward to it. (Being sober) has been a change as of recently, and just like for performances, to just be fully present and leaning into it as much as I can, it's been a game changer.

MATT: I've noticed a difference in Austin too. Like he's just been locked in way tighter and it's been a good change. And now it seems like the whole band's kind of following suit. Everybody seems to be kind of following the whole, ‘let's lock in, take care of ourselves and bring the best show we can.’ And in terms of achieving something on the tour, it's obviously called the Smoke & Mirrors Tour. So, we're looking to promote the album, get some new people to listen to us and kind of almost establish ourselves as a regional band and start to grow that base.

1120: What else do you have on the agenda for 2025?

AUSTIN: We're booked pretty far out.

MATT: Yeah, we’re booked through October. So, we're staying pretty busy. We’re playing Cattoopalooza (Aug. 8-10) in Dunkirk, which is a tattoo and music festival. So that'll be fun. Daze Ago is headlining one day and STEM is headlining another day. We’re going to be playing on the third day. If you look at our schedule, we've kind of been doing Buffalo once a month and trying to line up the rest of the month with three out-of-town shows. So, expect another tour in the next year. Expect more new music; we've already been writing. It's going to be a fun year for a Little Liar. Good things are going to happen.