For anyone bemused by the swift and stellar rise of Glasvegas, the arrival of New York trio A Place To Bury Strangers’ eponymous debut is akin to the cavalry storming over the hills to save the encircled and endangered wagon train in the valley below. While both bands trade in an effects-driven wall of sound that owes more than just a passing nod to the Jesus & Mary Chain’s fearsome template, A Place To Bury Strangers take the aesthetic honours thanks to an atmosphere of sleazy nastiness more suited to this twisted strain of rock’n’roll.
If the overly earnest emotional and ishoos-based outpourings of Glasvegas are designed to make you hold on to each other as much as what you’ve got, A Place To Bury Strangers is a cause to lay out the rubber sheeting and open the Pandora’s box of leather, toys and nipple clamps; simply put, this is deviant music to soundtrack thoroughly deviant activities.
Eschewing any notions of revolution in favour of evolution, A Place To Bury Strangers have moved the scuzzed-up possibilities of 21st century rock’n’roll to where it should be – louder, brasher and with the ability to upset firmly in place. The album largely succeeds because of its honesty. Making no pretence at originality, A Place To Bury Strangers builds upon the blueprint that’s been laid by others across the decades – the effects-heavy maelstrom of My Bloody Valentine, the metronomic precision of Suicide and the Jesus & Mary Chain’s innate pop sensibility – while indelibly stamping their own identity across the proceedings.
Indeed, the opening vortex of ‘Missing You’ is an indication of what’s to come. A barrage of white noise interspersed with slicing guitars and utterly relentless rhythms, the band don’t so much build up to a peak as kick you off one. From here on in, the pace is furious. ‘To Fix The Gash In Your Head’ is the sound of The Cure’s ‘One Hundred Years’ frothing at the mouth after a diet of high-grade pharmaceutical amphetamines.
A Place To Bury Strangers’ Achilles heel is that they wear their influences a little too proudly on their sleeves. ‘I Know I’ll See You’ sails perilously close to the Mary Chain’s ‘In A Hole’ while ‘Sunbeam’ could easily see Twin Peaks’ composer Angelo Badalamenti calling the lawyers. These caveats aside, A Place To Bury Strangers more than fulfill rock’n’roll’s primordial brief and the outlook for further levels of sonic density is one to look forward to.
