If You're Feeling Sinister

The band signed to Jeepster in August 1996, after the praise for Tigermilk, and agreed terms that included releasing no singles and doing no press or promotional events. Murdoch and Colburn were living in a flat above Hyndland Parish Church in Glasgow, where Murdoch was caretaker, and the band rehearsed new songs in the church hall. The album took five days to record and three to mix, slightly longer than Tigermilk, in the same studio. The engineer Tony Doogan worked with the band's earlier engineer to keep a similar style. Sarah Martin, who had recently joined, compared the two records to Rubber Soul and Revolver, made quickly one after the other.

The cover photograph was taken by Murdoch and shows his friend Ciara MacLaverty. The album came out in the UK in November 1996, the band promoted it with shows alongside Tindersticks, and it was issued in the United States in early 1997. That release delayed the next album, so the band put out three EPs in 1997 while the record gathered an audience at American colleges. In the UK it reached 191 on the albums chart, and in Norway 23.

Reception

Critics at the time were warm. Q's Martin Aston wrote that Murdoch had built on Nick Drake's blueprint while swapping Drake's loneliness for something more chipper, and the Chicago Tribune's Greg Kot said the folk-pop songs ingratiate themselves on first listen. AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine later wrote that Sinister plays like a great forgotten album. It was eighth in The Village Voice's Pazz and Jop poll for 1997, and Pitchfork ranked it 14th on its 2003 list of the top 100 albums of the 1990s. Rolling Stone placed it 481st in its 2020 list of the 500 greatest albums and 75th on its list of the best albums of the 1990s. It also appears in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

In a 2026 Sunday Review, Pitchfork's Elizabeth Nelson called it a marvelous second LP and said that where Tigermilk was a strong statement of purpose, Sinister was a streamlined juggernaut of layered character studies. She heard British folk and late-period Velvet Underground in the mix, and Nick Drake in Murdoch's voice. Stereogum's Tom Breihan wrote on its twentieth anniversary that it could be too influential, and critics have heard its mark in Alvvays, Hovvdy, Kings of Convenience and the Shins. Scott Plagenhoef wrote a book about it for the 33 1/3 series in 2007, and Pitchfork.tv released an hour-long documentary directed by RJ Bentler in 2013. In 2005 the band released a live version, If You're Feeling Sinister: Live at the Barbican.