A Place To Bury Strangers

★★★★ See Through You DEDSTRANGE. DL/LP

Real-deal NYC noise-pop three-piece remain untamed.

Where nu-gaze is often far too eager to please, offering but a timid approximation of the original turn-of-the-’90s shoegazers, APTBS always feel like the genuine article. Sole mainstay Oliver Ackermann, who tellingly also works as an FX pedal architect, clearly understands that to make a feedback-pop omelette, many eggs have to meet a brutal demise. His sixth album in 20 years unveils an umpteenth rhythm section, but presents a wholly unsanitised vision, where screeching white noise guitars eclipse thundering beats in a reverb dungeon far from prissy ‘Health & Safety’ regulation. While Ackermann audibly still hasn’t recovered from hearing the JAMC’s late’80s B-sides darkfest Barbed

Wire Kisses (see Let’s See Each Other, etc), and Hold On Tight even mirrors Sidewalking’s pedestrian-in-rain outsider imagery, fabulous shafts of light shoot in late on, as beachy I Don’t Know How You Do It and New Order-esque Love Reaches Out conclude with unforeseen blue-sky optimism.