A Place To Bury Strangers – Exploding Head (2022 Remaster) (2009/2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

A Place To Bury Strangers - Exploding Head (2022 Remaster) (2009/2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Following their eponymous debut in 2007, Exploding Head is A Place To Bury Strangers’ most notable record, garnering the New York noise rock outfit critical praise and a cult fanbase. Led by Oliver Ackermann, the band had a simple goal for ‘their first proper studio album’; “to create the craziest, most fucked-up recording ever.” Recorded at their Death By Audio studios in New York and released on Mute Records, the album was critically praised for its explorative sound, taking inspiration from shoegaze icons such as Jesus & Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine. Pitchfork described the album as “frustrated aggression, lacerating feedback… saturated with slender indie-pop melody.” The album has now been digitally remastered by Oliver Ackermann and is presented in three formats.

Though A Place to Bury Strangers called their second album Exploding Head, it’s arguable that their debut, with its walls of low-rent distortion and abrasive beats, was more cranium-crushing. Even if the band’s move to Mute resulted in cleaner, ever-so-slightly calmer surroundings for their music, A Place to Bury Strangers’ sound and songwriting have more power and nuance here, as well as more structure — nearly every song balances the black-on-black menace of their debut with pop appeal. Nowhere is this clearer than on “It Is Nothing,” which opens the album with a three-minute burst of buzzsaw guitars, or on “Lost Feeling,” which boasts a subtle tension and dive-bombing dynamics that wouldn’t have been possible on the band’s debut. This faithfulness to shoegaze’s dark side sets A Place to Bury Strangers apart from many of their fellow revivalists who favor wispy, cotton-candy clouds of sound. Befitting their name, the band is still obsessed with death and destruction, be it physical or spiritual (as on the aptly fuzzed-out epic “Ego Death”). Interestingly, Exploding Head’s more polished production brings out some of the more retro elements in the band’s music, underscoring their fondness for goth, synth pop — and in “Deadbeat”‘s case, surf rock — as well as their shoegaze foundations. They sound more like a pissed-off, guitar-enhanced New Order than ever on “In Your Heart,” and close the album with “I Lived My Life to Stand in the Shadow of Your Heart,” which offers heroic doses of pure effect pedal-stomping heaven. At times, listeners of a certain age will swear they heard one of these songs on college radio or saw one of the band’s video on 120 Minutes or PostModern MTV — “Slipping Away” in particular has the feeling of a forgotten classic — and that’s a compliment. Exploding Head is a fine step forward for A Place to Bury Strangers, and shows they’re among the best bands bringing shoegaze into the 21st century. – Heather Phares

Tracklist:

1-01. A Place To Bury Strangers – It Is Nothing (2022 Remaster) (02:58)
1-02. A Place To Bury Strangers – In Your Heart (2022 Remaster) (03:19)
1-03. A Place To Bury Strangers – Lost Feeling (2022 Remaster) (05:14)
1-04. A Place To Bury Strangers – Deadbeat (2022 Remaster) (03:32)
1-05. A Place To Bury Strangers – Keep Slipping Away (2022 Remaster) (04:43)
1-06. A Place To Bury Strangers – Ego Death (2022 Remaster) (05:34)
1-07. A Place To Bury Strangers – Smile When You Smile (2022 Remaster) (04:52)
1-08. A Place To Bury Strangers – Everything Always Goes Wrong (2022 Remaster) (03:40)
1-09. A Place To Bury Strangers – Exploding Head (2022 Remaster) (03:33)
1-10. A Place To Bury Strangers – I Lived My Life to Stand in the Shadow of Your Heart (2022 Remaster) (05:38)
1-11. A Place To Bury Strangers – Hit the Ground (2022 Remaster) (04:29)
1-12. A Place To Bury Strangers – Girlfriend (2022 Remaster) (02:57)
1-13. A Place To Bury Strangers – It’s a Fast Driving Raveup With a Place to Bury Strangers (2022 Remaster) (04:26)
1-14. A Place To Bury Strangers – Alive (2022 Remaster) (02:30)
1-15. A Place To Bury Strangers – I Lived My Life to Stand in the Shadow of Your Heart (Demo) (2022 Remaster) (04:24)
1-16. A Place To Bury Strangers – Don’t Save Your Love (2022 Remaster) (03:57)
1-17. A Place To Bury Strangers – Take It All (2022 Remaster) (03:26)
1-18. A Place To Bury Strangers – The Light (2022 Remaster) (03:12)
1-19. A Place To Bury Strangers – Tried to Hide (2022 Remaster) (03:30)
1-20. A Place To Bury Strangers – Suffragette City (2022 Remaster) (03:06)