A Place to Bury Strangers
At last, Brooklyn's A Place To Bury Strangers release their self titled debut album here in the UK. The band that blew R13 away at this year's SXSW festival so much we purchased the album before coming home. The UK version is exactly the same bar a slightly different colour scheme on the cover which means we are all in for a treat.
A Place To Bury Strangers have been highly touted for being loud, which may be true but what people fail to mention is the sheer brilliance this album is. There is not one weak track on this ten song album which sees an array of rock, psychedelic, experimental and shoegaze music with plenty of distortion and killer tunes to blow your mind and in my mind this is one of the albums of the year by a long way.
Straight from the opening track, 'Missing You', and all the way through we are treated to a wall of distorted sound coupled with Oliver Ackermann's guitar skills and haunting vocals, Jono Mofo the bass player who tends to play more like a lead guitarist and Jay Space keeping it all together with his furious and daunting drumming. Not only is Oliver Ackermann a pretty great guitarist, he also is a great pedal maker. All the pedals he plays with have been designed and built by himself as are quite a few others that other bands play with, such as U2, Wilco and Nine Inch Nails. Oliver does tend to show off his skills by playing with an endless set of pedals too.
There is plenty of diversity on the album to keep it fresh throughout. With tracks like 'To Fix The Gash In Your Head' with its dance style drums, the slow, eerie and depressing song that is 'The Falling Sun' and the tripping out style song that is 'Breathe', proving that this is an album with more layers than meets the eyes.
Having just finished supporting MGMT over here, A Place To Bury Strangers are about to embark on a headline tour of their own. With gigs in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland no one has been left out. All I can say is go see and if you do take ear plugs with you, some crowd members at SXSW were seen putting pieces of bread in their ears to protect them. You have been warned.