Nonpareils

Founding Liars member Aaron Hemphill developed Nonpareils as his solo outlet, extending the experimental leanings of his earlier work into increasingly unpredictable terrain. With 2018's Scented Pictures he delivered deconstructed electropop that overturned standard expectations of dynamics, tempo, and melody, yet 2024's Rhetoric & Terror, while adopting a marginally tighter framework, continued to suggest a distorted parallel timeline for pop music.

After exiting Liars in 2016, Hemphill redirected his efforts toward abstract pop that paired hooks with hazy textures, captured through deliberately unconventional recordings of acoustic instruments alongside glitchy electronics. The sessions struck him as more collective than individual, prompting the name Nonpareils after the decorative candy sprinkles. His first album, Scented Pictures, appeared in April 2018. Nonpareils resurfaced in September 2024 with Rhetoric & Terror, which supplied a more intimate lens on Hemphill's experiments that shifted between lulling and abrasive passages and included vocals from his wife Angelika Kaswalder together with woodwinds and further arrangements by former Blood Brothers member Morgan Henderson.