Liars

Past Liars albums have typically been greeted with copious chatter about the newest radical stylistic shift the band has made — from dance punk to murky drone to percussive tribalism to cheeky Jesus and Mary Chain ripoffs — but Sisterworld, the band's excellent fifth album, feels like the completion of the world the trio has been building all along: an untamed, unsettling place filled with equal parts menace and beauty, fine texture and blunt violence, lorded over by the hulking figure of Angus Andrew, who remains one of rock's most captivating frontmen. On stage, Andrew, often clothed in a disheveled suit, puts his lanky frame to fantastic use, writhing all over the stage one minute and posing comically the next, reminding us that his band's music is often great dumb fist-pumping fun. (He also tells some pretty great jokes.) Liars can be somewhat foreboding on record, but live, the band remains absolutely not to be missed.