Born out of the anger and disillusionment surrounding the Iraq War, Resonants’ new single, Liar Liar, has been more than twenty years in the making. As the band prepares for its 28 October release, vocalist Maz reflects on the protest that inspired it, the politicians who broke her trust and why the song feels more relevant now than ever.
Maz had lived in London for years, but nothing had prepared her for the sheer scale of the anti-Iraq War demonstration in 2003. Standing among an immense crowd of protesters, she was struck by the extraordinary sense of solidarity, and by the anger that had brought so many people onto the streets.
“There was huge camaraderie. There was huge anger,” she remembers. “It was really motivating.”
For someone who describes herself as politically minded but not particularly participatory, joining the march had been a significant step. She and her husband had thrown themselves into the preparations, determined to be part of a movement that seemed capable of changing the course of events.
What stayed with her most was the conviction that such an overwhelming show of public opposition must surely count for something.
“I really felt at the time it was going to be listened to,” she recalls. “It was one of those moments where we thought, ‘How can we not be listened to?’”
It is a question that has followed her for more than two decades, eventually finding expression in Liar Liar, the new single from genre-defying alternative outfit Resonants. Blending alternative rock with electronic elements, the track takes aim at political dishonesty, the manipulation of public opinion and the sense of betrayal that follows when those in power appear to answer to nobody.
New Labour, Old Betrayal
For Maz, that betrayal had particularly deep roots.
Growing up in Scotland, she had known little other than Conservative governments. When Tony Blair’s New Labour swept to power in 1997, she was eighteen and voting for the first time. Like many of her generation, she saw the election as an opportunity for meaningful political change.
“All I’d ever known growing up in Scotland was a Conservative government, mostly under Margaret Thatcher,” she explains. The arrival of New Labour brought “that feeling of power” and the belief that “these people are going to change things. These people are actually going to help make a difference.”
By the time Britain was preparing to join the invasion of Iraq, that optimism had begun to curdle.
The claims surrounding weapons of mass destruction, the government’s justification for military intervention and the increasingly troubling political rhetoric all contributed to Maz’s growing unease. She was equally disturbed by what she saw coming from the George W. Bush administration in the United States.
The London demonstration, held before the invasion, offered a brief but intoxicating sense that ordinary people might still be able to influence events. The subsequent decision to go to war was devastating.
Maz describes the experience as watching a “slow car crash”, with the hopes and determination of so many people ultimately failing to prevent the catastrophe they feared.
“You’re sending your own people to a country to fight, who don’t know what’s really going on. They’ve all been lied to as well,” she says. “And then people in that country are… they’ve just had their lives decimated.”
She is careful to distinguish opposition to the war from any sympathy for Saddam Hussein. Her concern was with the legitimacy of the decision to invade, the evidence offered in its defence and the consequences for the people who would bear the cost.
“The point is, do you have a legitimate reason to go into a war and potentially kill, which they did, you know, hundreds and thousands of people? Or do you not have a legitimate reason to go into a war?”
It was this mixture of anger, disbelief and disillusionment that gave Liar Liar its original purpose.
we will pull you down
The song emerged during Resonants’ earlier incarnation, with Maz and fellow musician Jez developing the track live in a rehearsal room. Its confrontational spirit owed something to artists Maz admired for their willingness to speak plainly about uncomfortable subjects.
She cites Skin of Skunk Anansie and Garbage’s Shirley Manson as particular inspirations, performers who have never seemed especially concerned about making themselves more palatable for the sake of avoiding controversy.
In everyday life, Maz admits, she tends to be considerably less confrontational.
“I’m generally, in my day-to-day life, not that kind of person. I will be less confrontational,” she says. “But this was a moment where I felt like it actually warrants some confrontation.”
That instinct gives Liar Liar much of its character. The song’s anger is directed at political leaders who exploit public trust, but its challenge is for the people. Maz sums up the sentiment in a few uncompromising words: “We will bring you down.”
A chorus was born.
“You can’t tell who’s telling the truth.”
The passing of time has done little to diminish its force.
When Maz and Jez returned to the song in 2023, updating the arrangement and writing new material, they found themselves confronting a political environment that, in some respects, seemed even harder to comprehend than the one that had inspired the original.
The underlying grievances were familiar enough. Politicians lying to their electorates is hardly a recent invention, as Maz readily acknowledges. What had changed was the machinery through which information, opinion and outright fabrication could spread.
“We couldn’t have imagined 20 years ago that we would be in a situation where you don’t know what truth is anymore,” she says. “You can’t tell who’s telling the truth. And who isn’t.”
For Maz, the deeper concern is the fragmentation of any shared understanding of reality. Social media algorithms and partisan news environments have made it increasingly easy for people to inhabit entirely different versions of the same events.
“People don’t even sign up to the same version of the truth, even if it’s fact-based,” she observes. “It’s dystopian. What can you say?”
It is an unsettling thought, and one that helps explain why Liar Liar has acquired a second life. The song may have been conceived in response to a particular moment in British political history, but its central accusation now reaches well beyond the Iraq War.
Jez sees the song as fundamentally concerned with the relationship between political representatives and the people who elect them. Those entrusted with power, he argues, are there to serve the public rather than enrich themselves at its expense.
For Maz, the frustration is compounded by the apparent ease with which people can be persuaded to turn against one another while those responsible for governing escape proper scrutiny.
Never give up on people
And yet, for all the anger in Liar Liar, she remains reluctant to surrender to cynicism.
Having stepped away from much of her personal social media activity, which she describes as draining and depressing, Maz has become increasingly interested in what happens when people engage with one another away from the screens and algorithms that shape so much public discourse.
She recalls seeing people begin to question their assumptions, change their minds and reconsider opinions they had previously held with certainty.
“I think I’ve never given up on people,” she says.
There is something quietly reassuring about her insistence that ordinary human connections still matter. Beneath the competing political allegiances and carefully cultivated divisions, she believes most people want remarkably similar things: to care for their families, enjoy a decent existence and see others spared unnecessary suffering.
“If you actually go out of your house and speak to a neighbour, another human being who happens to have a different opinion to you, you’re going to find out that most of the same stuff is true about you.”
It might seem an unexpectedly optimistic outlook from someone responsible for such an accusatory song. But Maz’s faith in the public, however battered by experience, has survived the intervening years.
What began with a young woman standing among protesters in London has become a song about the consequences of political dishonesty and the enduring ability of those in power to manipulate the people they are supposed to represent.
The circumstances have changed considerably since 2003. The frustration, Maz suggests, is depressingly familiar. So too is the possibility that people might eventually recognise what they have in common, and decide to do something about it.
As she puts it, perhaps the most important thing is that people begin “understanding where they need to direct their energies.”
Twenty-three years after that London march, Liar Liar arrives with its original question still unanswered.
Resonants release Liar Liar on 28 October 2026.