The Top 30 Albums of 2007: # 24

A Place To Bury Strangers
A Place To Bury Strangers

Gone are the days of critic-asshattery! Thanks to the world of bittorrent and a couple other sites this reviewer doesn't want anybody to ruin by making popular, no more can a music critic alight on an album that's impossible to find. If this was '92, then falling head over heels with an album of which only 500 were originally pressed would've been enough for the reader to call for the waterboards. But now, anything is accessible, so everything is permissible. Goebbels said that, and although he was talking about, you know, gross, awful genocide stuff, it's an apt description of the world in which the media vampire now lives. So there it is, surfing the wave of information, A Place To Bury Strangers--an album that Pitchfork triumphed AFTER the New York Times said they were the "loudest band in new york." While that's not exactly accurate, as Sightings kind of trump them on the volume tip, the NY Times gets a pass--they do have some other stuff to focus their reporting on besides who's playing in Williamsburg. (Just don't tell Williamsburg. They still think that they're going to impact the upcoming Presidential election. They're fucking ADORABLE.) The other thing that Bury Strangers gets labeled with, almost as consistently, is the comparison to Joy Division, a band that they sort of sound like if you've stayed up all night blasting Hair Police. Hell, Gloria Estefan and her Miami Sound Machine sounds like Joy Division after a Hair Police marathon. No, the comparison everybody should have made was that Bury Strangers sounds like an amped up New Order, if Ian Curtis hadn't totally blown everybody's mind by taking the INXS way out.

Now, we know what you're thinking. You're thinking that New Order is just Joy Division sans Ian. Yeah, that might make sense if this was Intro to Trig, but it's fucking MUSIC baby doll. You're probably also thinking that if Band X (Bury Strangers) is equal to Band Y (New Order) plus Voice 7 (Ian Curtis,) then why not just marathon New Order and Joy Division? As long as you skip the New Order that showed up on the So I Married An Axe Murderer soundtrack, you'll only be hearing dope tunes, right?

That's where you wrong--because there's a little number two next to that Y. (That means it's Y multiplied by ITSELF.) Why?

Because A Place To Bury Strangers also sounds a lot like it's got My Bloody Valentine's guitars. In other words, holy living god, it's X=Y(Y) + 7, or X-7 divided by Y = Y.

Yeah, you don't want to admit that your mind just got blown. You don't want to, but how are you going to explain to your girlfriend why I'm IN YOUR HOUSE, WASHING MY HANDS. Try that one on, flapjack.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

A Place To Bury Stranger's Official Site