A Place To Bury Strangers. One of those band names that you’ve seen countless times and probably instantly dismissed because you’ve got the feeling that you can sum up their sound in one quick and easy move. Dark and unsettling, with plenty of feedback and squalor? Yeah, that pretty much nails it. With Transfixation, the pre-release blurb is abuzz with talk of an all new sound, being a lot less JAMC-fixated while offering a lot more psych rock.
With that sort of promise and premise, it’s an album that is worth a listen. Transfixation has its moments; it has a lot of good moments but the good moments sound like someone else and the bad moments sound like the audio equivalent of tramping through the sludge on the Sunday of a particularly wet music festival.
On the best parts of the first half of the record, they sound like Joy Division, like many great bands of the past 20 years, but it’s a patchy run of songs, only really fizzing to life when the tempo rises to match the aggressive nature of the sound.
Things definitely improve in the second half of the album as APTBS hit their stride, with this being the part of the album that will be most familiar to their loyal fans. ‘Now It’s Over’ has a pace and a passion which brings a sense of uneasy paranoia to the second half of the record. ‘I’m So Clean’ hurtles back to the Reid Brothers and this tone is continued with ‘Fill The Void’. ‘I Will Die’ concludes the record with chaotic reverb, leaving you with the sense that is a missed opportunity for the band.
Bands should be encouraged to expand their sound and meander off in different ways, but when your traditional sound fits and feels so much better, there’s a lot to be said for mining the terrain that you own.