LIARS announce details of a new album, A Ban On Plastic Bag Bans, and share the first track, 'Ice Pick, Kalamazoo' - Album out 5 March 2027 on Mute

LIARS  ANNOUNCE DETAILS OF A NEW ALBUM A BAN ON PLASTIC BAG BANS 11TH STUDIO ALBUM - OUT 5 MARCH 2027    WATCH THE VIDEO FOR FIRST TRACK TO BE SHARED, ‘ICE PICK, KALAMAZOO’ HERE

[Liars, credit Clemens Habicht] Angus Andrew has announced details of the new LIARS album, A Ban On Plastic Bag Bans, set for release on 5 March 2027. The album launches today with the first taste of what to expect from Liars’ 11th studio album in the shape of ‘Ice Pick, Kalamazoo’, alongside news of a UK / European tour, the first in nearly 10 years.    The tour will include a rare chance to see Liars’ incendiary live performance up close in intimate venues, including London’s MOTH Club on 20 October, and includes a one-off 20th anniversary performance of Drum’s Not Dead with two very different Polish percussionists, including Macio Moretti, at Unsound Festival – full details below.   Liars’ staggering new album A Ban On Plastic Bag Bans harnesses Angus’s incomparable gift for sonic world-building to confront the bureaucratic absurdity and corporate power he encountered while living in middle America, and ‘Ice Pick, Kalamazoo’ introduces some of these themes.

Watch the video for ‘Ice Pick, Kalamazoo’

Shortly after relocating to Kalamazoo, Michigan, with his wife and daughter, Angus Andrew smelled something. A thick odour surrounded their home and his daughter’s school: toxic hydrogen sulphide, among other pollutants, released by a local packaging factory at levels deemed so dangerous that the state health department advised residents to “stay indoors”. Angus soon found himself drawn into an uphill campaign to hold the factory accountable, confronting a tangle of environmental damage, corporate responsibility and institutional inertia. He absorbed the frustrations and absurdities of the experience into Liars’ music, transforming the realities of everyday life into something stranger and more unsettling. “You become so used to something, you lose your sense of it.” That idea sits at the centre of A Ban On Plastic Bag Bans: how injustice can become part of the background of everyday life, and how exhausting it can be to fight forces that seem too powerful to move. The title is based on an actual Michigan law that prohibits local governments from banning single-use plastic bags. Its absurd bureaucratic logic became a kind of shorthand for Angus's experience of Michigan, where attempts to reduce environmental harm could themselves become something to prohibit.   Formed in New York in 2000, Liars have always been a shapeshifting, alien presence at the edges of contemporary music. From the shifty dance-punk of 2001’s They Threw Us All In A Trench And Stuck A Monument On Top to a string of radically inventive albums - including 2006’s Drums Not Dead, 2017’s TFCFand 2021’s The Apple Drop - Liars have never stood still. The Apple Drop was released as lockdowns made touring impossible and, for the first time since he was a teenager, Angus stopped thinking about making another record. Instead, he threw himself into other projects: founding the record label No Gold and experimental music platform Essential Tremors. “Both of those things were really about listening,” he says, “stepping back from being a full-time creator and connecting with these other artists”. Through both projects, he also began “listening and responding to the environment in Kalamazoo.” [Liars, credit Clemens Habicht] After the longest period of his career without making music, Angus eventually realised something strange had happened: he had been making an album the whole time. He just hadn’t created any sound yet. He was not interested in making a traditional political album, or in turning the record into a soapbox for a particular cause. Instead, he became interested in the absurdity of the bureaucracy surrounding these struggles, and in the imbalance of power that allows corporations to exert influence across so many levels of everyday life. “It’s got more to do with the perception of things than modern pollution – how these things that can be a constant in your life become sort of ingrained and invisible.” The album was written and recorded between the States and Australia, where Angus now resides. Reuniting with avant-garde jazz drummer Laurence Pike and multi-instrumentalist Cameron Deyell - both collaborators on The Apple Drop and touring partners since TFCF - the three musicians brought an intuitive working language to the sessions. Rather than arriving with finished songs, they relied on trust, improvisation and reaction - allowing ideas to evolve across continents without losing their centre of gravity.  A Ban On Plastic Bag Bans ultimately becomes a different kind of political album – not only concerned with protest, but also with what it costs a person to keep on fighting. “It wasn't just the environment that was polluted,” Angus says. “It was also my mind.” A Ban On Plastic Bag Bans will be released on white recycled and recyclable polyethylene terephthalate (PET) vinyl, CD and digitally via Mute on 5 March  Pre-order A Ban On Plastic Bag Bans A BAN ON PLASTIC BAG BANS TRACKLISTING (CAT # STUMM530)  Happy Or Not  Ice Pick, Kalamazoo  Laced Plume  Urgent As Always  Deep Deeper  Disaster Tropes  Beat Creep Some Eyes  Real Time Trespasser  SHAME!  Retention Arc  Out Of Order   LIARS LIVE – AUTUMN 2026 2 Oct – Bucharest (RO), Control Club / Opening Party 3 Oct – Nantes (FR), Le Lieu Unique 5 Oct – Milan (IT), Arci Bellezza 9 Oct - Kraków (PL), Unsound, one-off performance of Drums Not Dead 10 Oct - Belgrade (RS), Changeover Festival 12 Oct – Prague (CZ), Punctum 13 Oct – Berlin (DE), Neue Zukunft 15 Oct – Amsterdam (NL), Paradiso 17 Oct - Kortrijk (NL), Atelier Nooitgedacht 18 Oct – Liege (BE), Kultura 20 Oct – London (UK), Moth Club 22 Oct – Paris (FR), Boule Noire 24 Oct – Copenhagen (DK), Ideal Bar   Tickets on sale from 10am local time on Friday 11 Sep. More info HERE RECENT PRAISE FOR THE APPLE DROP “It’s a beautiful, weird, heartfelt and uncanny album – exactly like the nine records that preceded it and also entirely unlike them.” - The Quietus   “After 20 years, Angus Andrew can still get the sweat itching down your back.” - The Guardian   “Twenty years in, and Liars are no easier to comprehend – but that’s makes their version of the truth so compelling.” - Clash 8/10*   “Liars’ most refined and accessible album has emerged.” - 4/5* NME   “Andrew’s mercurial mindset is again the key to Liars’ singularity.” - Uncut lead review, 8/10   “…one of the most compelling bodies of work in modern music.” - Loud & Quiet   “… confident and ambitious” - Electronic Sound Connect with Liars Official website | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube Connect with Mute INSTAGRAM | WEB | TIK TOK | FACEBOOK | BLUESKY | X