Bundle - Liars - A Ban On Plastic Bag Bans - Vinyl Bundle

A Ban On Plastic Bag Bans is Liars’ 11th studio album, a strange and unsettling record shaped by the bureaucratic absurdity and corporate power Angus Andrew encountered while living in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

After becoming involved in an uphill campaign to confront pollution from a local packaging factory, Andrew's found himself increasingly absorbed by the frustrations, contradictions and institutional inertia surrounding the struggle. Rather than documenting those events literally, the album captures the psychological atmosphere of living within them.

At its centre is the idea that injustice can become part of the background of everyday life: environmental damage becomes normalised, power feels immovable, and the effort to resist it becomes exhausting. The title comes from an actual Michigan law prohibiting local governments from banning single-use plastic bags. Its absurd bureaucratic logic became a shorthand for Andrew’s experience, where attempts to reduce environmental harm could themselves become something to prohibit.

Written and recorded between the United States and Australia, the album reunites Andrew with avant-garde jazz drummer Laurence Pike and multi-instrumentalist Cameron Deyell, both collaborators on The Apple Drop. Working through improvisation, experimentation and reaction, the three developed the record across continents, allowing songs to emerge rather than arrive fully formed.

That unsettled process is embedded in the music. Insistent synth lines and world-weary vocals are disrupted by bursts of percussion, manipulated voices, guitar and field recordings, creating a constant sense of reality being probed or warped. The album is driven by anger, but coloured by exhaustion and defeat. Ultimately, A Ban On Plastic Bag Bans is less concerned with protest than with the psychological cost of continuing to fight forces that seem beyond reach. “It wasn’t just the environment that was polluted,” Andrew says. “It was also my mind.”