Liars – Ice Pick, Kalamazoo
Liars named their new album after an actual Michigan law, one that stops local governments from banning single-use plastic bags. Angus Andrew thinks it’s the perfect emblem of how an attempt to resolve a problem can become something to fight against.
Liars is Andrew’s solo project these days, and “A Ban On Plastic Bag Bans” is the follow-up to 2021’s “The Apple Drop,” due March 5, 2027 on Mute. Lead single “Ice Pick, Kalamazoo,” the second track on the eleven-song tracklist, takes its name from the Michigan city where Andrew relocated with his wife and daughter. Not long after moving, he noticed a persistent smell around the house and his daughter’s school. It was traced back to hydrogen sulfide and other pollutants from a nearby packaging factory, at levels the state health department flagged as dangerous enough to tell residents to stay indoors. Andrew got pulled into a campaign to hold the factory accountable, and the tangle of environmental damage, corporate stonewalling and bureaucratic exhaustion that followed became the album’s actual subject.
The track itself runs about three minutes on driving synths, relentless drums and a bassline that keeps pace with both, sitting somewhere between krautrock’s pulse and something closer to post-punk noise. Andrew recorded the album across the US and Australia, where he now lives, with longtime collaborators Laurence Pike on drums and Cameron Deyell on various instruments, both back from “The Apple Drop.” Rather than working from finished demos, the three of them built the material by improvising across continents. What I like is how plainly Andrew states the toll of all this rather than dressing it up: “It wasn’t just the environment that was polluted. It was also my mind.”
Tour Dates:
Europe:
- Oct. 2 / Bucharest, Romania / Control Club (Opening Party)
- Oct. 3 / Nantes, France / Le Lieu Unique
- Oct. 5 / Milan, Italy / Arci Bellezza
- Oct. 9 / Krakow, Poland / Unsound Festival (“Drums Not Dead” 20th-anniversary performance)
- Oct. 10 / Belgrade, Serbia / Changeover Festival
- Oct. 12 / Prague, Czech Republic / Punctum
- Oct. 13 / Berlin, Germany / Neue Zukunft
- Oct. 15 / Amsterdam, Netherlands / Paradiso
- Oct. 17 / Kortrijk, Belgium / Atelier Nooitgedacht
- Oct. 18 / Liege, Belgium / Kultura
- Oct. 20 / London, UK / Moth Club
- Oct. 22 / Paris, France / Boule Noire
- Oct. 24 / Copenhagen, Denmark / Ideal Bar
