A Place to Bury Strangers
Appearing out of Brooklyn with a bang, A Place to Bury Strangers’ 2007 debut is a thing of beauty, encrusted in a dense, grit- and rust-laden sludge that takes the shimmer off. Sounding like the love child of Lightning Bolt and The Jesus and Mary Chain, this trio knows how to hammer an alluring melody out of waves of guitar distortion and effects, drenching it all in copious amounts of reverb and brutal, teeth-rattling volume. Tense, shoegaze drones and circular, propulsive drumming make for mesmerizing listening, and when the trio lays it on so heavy they nearly collapse from the weight, it’s a thrill. The aptly named “Ocean” evokes drowning, but in a good, Joy Division-overkill kind of way; the moody, raw-nerved “Missing You” morphs into a symphony of guitars mimicking screeching power drills. More, uh, delicate tracks, like “I Know I’ll See You” — with its pulsing, Cure bassline and icy drum machine — help leaven the weight of the collection without sacrificing the intended goal of making music that is penetrating and at times, soul crushing. It’s easy to imagine Trent Reznor listening to “To Fix the Gash In Your Head,” and slapping his forehead in a “shoulda, coulda” moment. Ah, hindsight.
Setting tinnitus-inducing noise-pop against a tension-wracked Joy Division-meets-Ministry backdrop, this Brooklyn trio drenches lovesick indie pop in sheets of deafening static and distortion. Plenty of bands may have tapped the trebly, ecstatic side of shoegaze in recent years, but none have imbued it with this band's frustrated aggression or lacerating, industrial feedback.
For all their noise, A Place to Bury Strangers have been evolving subtly over the years, delivering more smudgy nuances to their noise rock with each album.
A Place to Bury Strangers are a precious gift for those of us who will always carry a torch for the delirious rush of pre-1990s Jesus and Mary Chain, and...
<p>Ackermann's pallid, gothic songs are as indistinct as figures in a snowstorm</p>