Here with their fifth studio album come New York City noise rockers A Place To Bury Strangers. Renowned for their blend of noise rock/punk and dreamy shoegaze, will their new album, Pinned be worth the hype?
The album kicks off with “Never Coming Back”, and true to their punk roots – the track sounds like a garage band warming up. Industrial style vocals not dissimilar to Marilyn Manson – of all people – set the tone for the track. The guitars and bass pound the same relentless chord structure whilst the drums roll on. Towards the end we get a tease of the shoegaze tones and distorted screeching solos as the band spread their wings, it’s definitely setting the tone.
A couple of the tracks definitely set their sights more towards their punk influences, “Execution” possibly being the prime example of this. With repetitive guitar and bass, lo-fi vocals and simple drums, you’d be forgiven for thinking the track was aiming for indie. However, the attacking, spiky synth and FX inserts don’t allow the track for settle for long at all.
Later in the album, “Frustrated Operator” follows in much the same vein. It flirts dangerously as just being an indie track, but gives it claws by drenching it in Ty Segall-levels of static and fuzz.
For the most part of the album, the band have flagrantly flown in the face of the ‘three-minute rule’ with most tracks sitting comfortably shorter at two minutes; with tracks like “Never Coming Back” or “Situations Change”. In the case of the latter – this is no bad thing as its one of the album’s best tracks.
Managing to seamlessly blend the soundscape and rock aspects of their work, the track fuses massively distorted guitars with eerie synths with just enough reverb on the vocals to make them sound dreamy. The track is complex with the amount of effects and instruments flying around but it’s been engineered in such a way that it doesn’t feel messy – the instruments feel further back in the soundstage and it feels genuinely atmospheric as the vocals float across the driving instrumental sections.
In terms of quality of the shorter tracks – that title may need to go to the following track, “Too Tough To Kill”. Whilst it follows the same punk vibe as “Execution”, the overall timbre of the track feels decidedly more. With haunting female vocals reminiscent of Alice Glass, and a synth line ripped clean out of her former band’s (Crystal Castles) wheelhouse, there’s only one thing wrong with the track; I want it to be longer.
For the most part, the album is exceptionally strong. It’s full of tracks that sound phenomenal on a set of speakers that really allow the complex tracks some room to breathe (this reviewer loves how it sounds on the Focal Chorus speaker range) as much as they’d hold a crowd at a festival. The only sticking point is that for all the amazing engineering work and, of course, direct input from the band; some of the tracks still feel like a garage band throwing in a few home recordings. There is only a small amount of the above tracks scattered in – but it just about detracts from making the album fully amazing. This is particularly evident in the final four tracks of the album. All of the songs are good songs, there’s no two ways about it – but they just lack a consistency of tone with one another.
However, as a side note on the final track of the album, “Keep Moving On”; if you’ve ever wondered what Blur would sound like if they paired up with Aphex Twin, it’s likely about a close of a representation as you’re able to find and worth seeking it out. It does bear repeating however that the album is still excellent work and bears listening to – preferably just over what would be considered a ‘polite’ volume.
To hear this album at it’s best, why not book a demo with your local Richer Sounds and hear it on a fantastic hi-fi system?
Author: Steve, Chiswick store
