Review: A Place To Bury Strangers – Exploding Head
A Place To Bury Strangers has a really great, loud, rocky sound. With reverberating echoes, wispy vocals, and adrenaline-laced back beats.
I enjoyed their latest release Exploding Head. It struck me as something Bender from The Breakfast Club would listen to. The album has a really nice background guitar pulse. They have a great lead singer whose smooth voice melds with the rough sound very well.
Exploding Head has a big, loud sound that certainly does seem deliberate in its loudness. Smart and musical. However, I would be interested to see their progress after a few more albums. Although I did enjoy Exploding Head, I thought that a few things could be tightened or improved upon. They don’t have quite the same precision as some of my favorite bands. I just think they’ve got some room to grow that I hope they take advantage of.
I also couldn’t help noticing that when looking them up online (their website and MySpace profile) they offered little to no personal information. Not that I want to know where they live so I can stand outside their window holding homemade muffins that spell out the name of the band. But I’m always interested in how the band formed, who their members are beyond their names and what their musical interests and motivations are. I hope in the future they realize that fans want more than tour dates and news acclaiming their performances, although both are also important.
DJ Food – One Man’s Weird Is Another Man’s World
DJ Food’s album One Man’s Weird is Another Man’s World is just that. An entire review summed up in the title. How do you critique something that admits its weirdness? Well, it wasn’t the world for me. A bit too weird.
I thought DJ Food and I were going to be close. I love food. And the hip-hop. But I didn’t quite feel this guy. Too much of the same thing, maybe. The album seems short with a total of six tracks, but the lengths of these tracks range from two minutes to thirteen, seven being the average. I started feeling a bit repeated on, wanting something new about halfway through each track. I kept thinking I wanted more and wondering where the track was going. Never quite satisfied with where it ended up.
It sounded self-important to me. A, well, weird conglomeration of sounds and speaking tracks mixed together in a kind of statement I didn’t understand. I felt out of the loop. On the outside of an inside joke. I really wanted to like it but just didn’t hit the right chords with me.
DJ Food’s latest was weird for me, but don’t let that stop you from trying it out. It just might be your world.