Liars - Sisterworld (LP) - Recycled Colour Vinyl

Sisterworld arrived in March 2010 on Mute Records, and it still feels like the moment Liars sharpened their shape-shifting instincts into something cinematic and unnervingly intimate. After the lung-busting noise and ritual thrum of earlier records, this one builds a shadowy parallel Los Angeles, a place the band talked about as a refuge from the city’s chaos. You can hear that imagined geography across these tracks, the sense of moving through alleys, vacant lots, and half-lit lounges, where a whisper turns into a siren before you realise.

Scissor sets the tone straight away. It opens with almost chamber-like calm, strings and close-mic’d vocals that feel like someone leaning in, then the floor gives out and the band lurches into jagged, distorted heft. That push and pull is the album’s heartbeat. Liars keep pairing delicacy with menace, so the quiet parts glow with tension and the loud parts bite rather than bludgeon. No Barrier Fun creeps in on a steady, narcotic pulse, while Scarecrows on a Killer Slant snarls and snaps, the rhythm section kicking up dust as guitars carve crooked angles around Angus Andrew’s voice. Proud Evolution is the closest thing to a sing-along here, though even that arrives with a nervous energy, the sort of song that blooms but never fully resolves.

What makes Sisterworld linger is the detail. The strings never feel ornamental. They act like another conspirator in the room, trading glances with the drums and synths. The production is tactile and moody, and the band sound locked into each other. Andrew, Aaron Hemphill, and Julian Gross make space feel like an instrument, so a single tom hit or a held breath can shift the whole scene. Goodnight Everything builds from a funereal stroll into something apocalyptic, and the closer, Too Much, Too Much, drifts off like dawn after a sleepless night. The sequencing is canny, guiding you through different districts of this imagined city without losing the map.

Liars didn’t ditch their art-punk roots here, they refined them. There’s still a taste for abrasion and trance-like repetition, but it is all bent toward narrative and mood. That approach landed well at the time. Reviews from the likes of Pitchfork, NME, and The Guardian praised the ambition and the way the band made paranoia feel sculpted rather than splattered. The album’s deluxe version underlined their collaborative streak too, with a second disc of reinterpretations. Thom Yorke’s “500$” take on Proud Evolution became a talking point, nudging the song into a queasier, skeletal sway that fit the Sisterworld mythos neatly.

If you’re a fan who came in with They Were Wrong, So We Drowned or the towering Drum’s Not Dead, there’s a familiar courage here. The difference is how the band funnels that restlessness into an urban ghost story. The lyrics sketch authority figures, burnouts, and loners, but it never tips into cliché. It feels lived in. You could drop these songs into late-night LA footage and they would look right at home.

On vinyl, the album’s dynamics breathe. Those shifts from hush to wrecking-ball hit harder, and the low end on Scarecrows on a Killer Slant and Drop Dead sits warm and heavy without smearing the edges. If you’re crate-digging for Sisterworld vinyl at a Melbourne record store, or trawling the web to buy Liars records online, this is one of the Liars albums on vinyl that rewards the format. It is also a tidy entry point for anyone curious about how the band threads melody through menace. For collectors, keeping an eye out for Liars vinyl on Mute pressings tends to be worth it, and it pops up often enough across vinyl records Australia listings that you won’t be hunting forever.

Fourteen years on, Sisterworld still feels like a fully realised place, not just a set of songs. It invites you in, points you down a side street, then lets the city do the talking. You step out the other side a bit rattled, a bit thrilled, and ready to go back in.