The Kills
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, A Place to Bury Strangers
Tue, August 9, 2011
Doors: 7:00 pm / Show: 8:00 pm
Terminal 5
New York, NY
$30 advance / $35 day of show
Tickets
This event is all ages
http://www.terminal5nyc.com/event/47627/The Kills
Jamie Hince and his musical partner Alison Mosshart believe that your art is something you live, rather than something you merely do. Therefore, the conventional approach to recording an album - write some songs a bit like your last songs, book flashy studio and ear candy-providing producer, be professional and get home in time for tea - is not an option for them. The Kills make music that sounds like the stripped-to-the-bone nub of the crux of the sex and death and madness at the heart of the very best rock ‘n’ roll. And the only way to pull that off is to put themselves through the creative, physical, financial and emotional mangle. “It was definitely a journey,” confirms Alison, with the sanguine air of one who believes that anything that doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. “We wrote so many records before we got to this one. It took a few failed attempts and different situations and going to different places and running out of money in order for us to get it together and write the right record.”
The Kills formed in 2000 when a boy from Andover, England and a girl from Florida, USA met in a South London hotel. “It was like we’d lived parallel lives”, Jamie recalls. Both had been to art college, the boy had just left a punk-pop band called Scarfo and the girl wanted to leave a punk-pop band called Discount, and both were disillusioned with the musical scenes they were part of. “We had these bedrooms on different sides of the Atlantic which were full of artworks and films and music that we’d made for no-one to listen to. We had so many things in common. It was at a time that if you spent a lot of time making art and dressing up you got beaten down for being pretentious. Everything was about being down to earth. And we both just felt this relief when we met each other.”
Alison was so convinced that this was the creative partner she’d always been searching for that she decamped from Florida to Jamie’s flat in South London. Inspired by a mutual obsession with The Velvet Underground, ‘70s London and New York punk, they formed a duo called The Kills, rejected everything they’d begun to hate about being in a rock band, got themselves signed to Domino Records and made a spectacularly sexy garage-punk album called Keep On Your Mean Side in 2003. Buoyed by the deserved critical acclaim for this and their incendiary early live shows, but also nonplussed by the fact that they were, once again, in a proper band with a record deal, they made a completely different, yet equally spectacular second album in 2005 called No Wow. A minimalist pop masterpiece, it was one of those records that made some into Kills fans for life, but most utterly confused. “No Wow’s really special to me,” reckons a defiant Jamie. “I was listening to lots of Cabaret Voltaire and Suicide, and wanted to make something stripped-down, and was determined not to make another garage-rock record like the first album. We were trying to make a Suicide record. More like a commercial suicide record…”
So, in light of that, is Midnight Boom, which has some goddam catchy tunes and features the beat-making skills of SpankRock producer Alex Epton aka Armani XXXchange, a conscious attempt to make a more commercial record? “Absolutely not,” responds Jamie, with something approaching horror in his voice. “We were just enjoying ourselves. I know we’re seen as dark, brooding, twisted and semi-gothic - but we’ve never felt like that. Midnight Boom is more in keeping with what me and Alison were doing when we first met. More tongue-in-cheek and less conceptual. People do tell me that Midnight Boom is more accessible. But the way I was brought up in music, words like accessible and commercial are still insults to me. Ha!”
“We wanted to make something very different from No Wow and Keep On Your Mean Side. I’d always talked it up in interviews that I wanted to be really forward-thinking and dispense with all influences. So I was determined to do that on this record. We’d toured No Wow for 14 or 15 months, and started work on the new record in January 2006. At first we ended up with an albums-worth of folky acoustic songs. We might put that out in the future, but I knew this wasn‘t what I wanted for this record. What kicked us off in another direction was a film I found called “Pizza Pizza Daddio” which is a sixties documentary about kids in inner-city schools in America, observing all the songs that they were singing in the playground. We just started building rhythms around those and had this concept of coming up with modern-day playground songs. Cos they’re really quite dark. Cutting people’s thumbs off, kicking people in the face, throwing ‘em down stairs. I kinda liked it. So I got this old MPC-60 hip hop drum sequencer and just started making rhythms on that. And these playground songs ended up as Midnight Boom. “Cheap & Cheerful” was the first playground song we came up with and then it developed from there. “Alphabet Pony” is based around that, too.”
With the basics down, The Kills started recording in Los Angeles, but they were discouraged by their environment.The pair decamped to Key Club in Benton Harbour, Michigan, where they’d recorded No Wow. Alison and Jamie’s best friends run the studio and it’s there where the Midnight Boom title came from. “That moment when the moon comes up and everyone goes to bed… it almost seems like time doubles. You can get so much more work done and you feel that magic happens. We worked from midnight to ten in the morning and slept all day. That’s just how we like to do it. I get anxious during the day. I need to get lost in a record,” explained Alison.
After 2 months in the studio, writing and recording, and experimenting with the drum programming, Jamie felt he needed a “veteran of beats”. The Clipse and SpankRock had made 2 of their favourite records of that year, so their subsequent producers were called upon to assist with the sound The Kills were after. Tips on how to make the rhythms more violent and gritty were lent and the record began to take a solid form.
Midnight Boom is a reminder that no-one makes erotically-charged rock ‘n’ roll like The Kills, even though they have never been romantically linked. Perhaps people wouldn’t believe their platonic relationship because Kills songs seem to drip with themes of hedonistic sexual freedom. Or maybe not having sex is the secret to the perfect sensual-musical marriage. “We’re aware that that’s how it comes across,’ Jamie concedes. ‘We get so many comments about the live shows, about it being sexually tense and sexually charged. But, honestly… that just came out of nerves! When there’s two people onstage of different genders, and you’re scared to death and don’t want to look at the audience so you stare at each other instead, that’s just how it comes out.”
“We’re both quite shy and secretive,” agrees Alison. “Which is why we don’t need other people when we’re working. We’re just control freaks.”
The Kills have come a long way since dreaming about bringing romance and sex and glamour back to rock ‘n’ roll in a flat in South London.
The Kills formed in 2000 when a boy from Andover, England and a girl from Florida, USA met in a South London hotel. “It was like we’d lived parallel lives”, Jamie recalls. Both had been to art college, the boy had just left a punk-pop band called Scarfo and the girl wanted to leave a punk-pop band called Discount, and both were disillusioned with the musical scenes they were part of. “We had these bedrooms on different sides of the Atlantic which were full of artworks and films and music that we’d made for no-one to listen to. We had so many things in common. It was at a time that if you spent a lot of time making art and dressing up you got beaten down for being pretentious. Everything was about being down to earth. And we both just felt this relief when we met each other.”
Alison was so convinced that this was the creative partner she’d always been searching for that she decamped from Florida to Jamie’s flat in South London. Inspired by a mutual obsession with The Velvet Underground, ‘70s London and New York punk, they formed a duo called The Kills, rejected everything they’d begun to hate about being in a rock band, got themselves signed to Domino Records and made a spectacularly sexy garage-punk album called Keep On Your Mean Side in 2003. Buoyed by the deserved critical acclaim for this and their incendiary early live shows, but also nonplussed by the fact that they were, once again, in a proper band with a record deal, they made a completely different, yet equally spectacular second album in 2005 called No Wow. A minimalist pop masterpiece, it was one of those records that made some into Kills fans for life, but most utterly confused. “No Wow’s really special to me,” reckons a defiant Jamie. “I was listening to lots of Cabaret Voltaire and Suicide, and wanted to make something stripped-down, and was determined not to make another garage-rock record like the first album. We were trying to make a Suicide record. More like a commercial suicide record…”
So, in light of that, is Midnight Boom, which has some goddam catchy tunes and features the beat-making skills of SpankRock producer Alex Epton aka Armani XXXchange, a conscious attempt to make a more commercial record? “Absolutely not,” responds Jamie, with something approaching horror in his voice. “We were just enjoying ourselves. I know we’re seen as dark, brooding, twisted and semi-gothic - but we’ve never felt like that. Midnight Boom is more in keeping with what me and Alison were doing when we first met. More tongue-in-cheek and less conceptual. People do tell me that Midnight Boom is more accessible. But the way I was brought up in music, words like accessible and commercial are still insults to me. Ha!”
“We wanted to make something very different from No Wow and Keep On Your Mean Side. I’d always talked it up in interviews that I wanted to be really forward-thinking and dispense with all influences. So I was determined to do that on this record. We’d toured No Wow for 14 or 15 months, and started work on the new record in January 2006. At first we ended up with an albums-worth of folky acoustic songs. We might put that out in the future, but I knew this wasn‘t what I wanted for this record. What kicked us off in another direction was a film I found called “Pizza Pizza Daddio” which is a sixties documentary about kids in inner-city schools in America, observing all the songs that they were singing in the playground. We just started building rhythms around those and had this concept of coming up with modern-day playground songs. Cos they’re really quite dark. Cutting people’s thumbs off, kicking people in the face, throwing ‘em down stairs. I kinda liked it. So I got this old MPC-60 hip hop drum sequencer and just started making rhythms on that. And these playground songs ended up as Midnight Boom. “Cheap & Cheerful” was the first playground song we came up with and then it developed from there. “Alphabet Pony” is based around that, too.”
With the basics down, The Kills started recording in Los Angeles, but they were discouraged by their environment.The pair decamped to Key Club in Benton Harbour, Michigan, where they’d recorded No Wow. Alison and Jamie’s best friends run the studio and it’s there where the Midnight Boom title came from. “That moment when the moon comes up and everyone goes to bed… it almost seems like time doubles. You can get so much more work done and you feel that magic happens. We worked from midnight to ten in the morning and slept all day. That’s just how we like to do it. I get anxious during the day. I need to get lost in a record,” explained Alison.
After 2 months in the studio, writing and recording, and experimenting with the drum programming, Jamie felt he needed a “veteran of beats”. The Clipse and SpankRock had made 2 of their favourite records of that year, so their subsequent producers were called upon to assist with the sound The Kills were after. Tips on how to make the rhythms more violent and gritty were lent and the record began to take a solid form.
Midnight Boom is a reminder that no-one makes erotically-charged rock ‘n’ roll like The Kills, even though they have never been romantically linked. Perhaps people wouldn’t believe their platonic relationship because Kills songs seem to drip with themes of hedonistic sexual freedom. Or maybe not having sex is the secret to the perfect sensual-musical marriage. “We’re aware that that’s how it comes across,’ Jamie concedes. ‘We get so many comments about the live shows, about it being sexually tense and sexually charged. But, honestly… that just came out of nerves! When there’s two people onstage of different genders, and you’re scared to death and don’t want to look at the audience so you stare at each other instead, that’s just how it comes out.”
“We’re both quite shy and secretive,” agrees Alison. “Which is why we don’t need other people when we’re working. We’re just control freaks.”
The Kills have come a long way since dreaming about bringing romance and sex and glamour back to rock ‘n’ roll in a flat in South London.
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
Do The Pains of Being Pure At Heart belong? After garnering widespread acclaim from the likes of The New York Times, Pitchfork and NME to countless indiepop forums, blogs and even Live Journals for their out-of-nowhere s/t 2009 Slumberland debut, have The Pains made the kind of record that will matter to the kind of people to whom records still matter?
From the opening explosions of electric guitar on "Belong" ("We don't") and the sumptuously synthetic dance pop perfection of "The Body" to the prom-in-heaven chorus of "Even in Dreams" and the closing moments of the uncommonly sincere and affecting "Strange" ("…and dreams can still come true") the answer is an unqualified, resounding (and damn good sounding) "Yes."
Having moved beyond mimicking, albeit exquisitely, their impressive record collections, this album is a celebration of the possibilities of pop from New York City's pre-eminent indiepop believers. It is as much an affirmative answer to "can they" (rise above their influences? Capture the magic of their debut without repeating it? Use color on their album sleeves?) as it opens the door to the more difficult question of "how do they?"
Or more precisely, how do they make such affecting, yet unaffected pop music? How do they sound at once confidently vulnerable and carelessly thoughtful? How does a band on Slumberland make a record with two of the most recognized producers in the world and come out the other end sounding even more like themselves than before? The dichotomies are daunting, but their resolution on Belong is nothing short of stunning.
Recorded with the production and mixing team of Flood (Depeche Mode, U2) and Alan Moulder (Smashing Pumpkins, Jesus and Mary Chain, Ride), Belong unleashes added power, while retaining all the sweet sweet melodies that still hit that pop spot.
"I definitely see this album as keeping with what we started doing at the beginning, only more," says singer/guitarist Kip Berman. "More immediate, more noisy, more beautiful. We never stopped believing in noise and pop, but now we've pushed both further. Compared to the last record, It's far more visceral, more vital, more of the body. It's about feeling, not feelings."
A continuation of what they started is a good thing, considering the loyal admirers and grass-roots support for what "could be the most promising indie pop group around" (Pitchfork). Never ones to get bogged down in self-seriousness, though, what we've got here is a band who tends to spend most interviews talking about how barely-remembered underground pop bands of the 80s and 90s are far superior to their own music, eats copious amounts of Haribo Gummi Candy and plays Boggle and Basketball on the road.
"The whole experience has just been a lot of fun for us - and a huge learning process," says singer/keyboardist Peggy Wang, "We've really always gone more on intuition than technique. We've always followed our heart. My favorite bands are the ones where you can tell the people are true friends and would be hanging out together even without playing music – or at least that's what we are and I wouldn't want it any other way."
One can certainly feel the intuitiveness and immediacy in each of the album's ten tracks. But where past offerings might've cocooned front man Kip Berman's woozy tales and beckoning high tenor in layers of gauze, Belong bathes them in a cathedral-like stained-glass light, revealing the beauty and pop perfection that once hid beneath fuzz and reverb. Radiant and heavenly, the band exults in the freedom and possibilities of pushing their sound beyond simple fuzz pop motifs and, liberated from the burden of those fuzzy memories, elevates their songwriting to new heights.
"Alan Moulder and Flood had a lot to do with helping us believe in ourselves, but they didn't try to change the way we did things," says Berman. "They just helped us focus on the things that made us 'us,' and allowed us to go all-in on the things we loved and strip away the things we didn't. It was an amazingly validating experience to even get a chance to work with them, since they came into this because they saw something in our music, not because we were some kind of fat paycheck or will win them a Grammy.
Perhaps not, but The Pains of Being Pure at Heart have come a long way since their beginnings as drum-machine equipped neophytes playing a legendary 5 song, ten-minute set at Peggy's birthday party in March of 2007.
Through a self-released EP in 2007 and a series of eagerly-received singles like 2008's "Everything With You" and "Kurt Cobain's Cardigan" the band developed an intensely loyal underground following. Upon release of their self-titled debut album in 2009, that acclaim extended to well-respected cultural tastemakers like The New York Times ("sensitive and sublime, Best of 2009) Pitchfork (Best New Music, Best of 2009) Stereogum ("Addictive pop gold" Best of 2009) and The NME ("pure indiepop to hold close to your heart," Best of 2009).
Looking forward, Spin chose Belong as one of the upcoming "winter albums that matter most", and Pitchfork gave the single "Heart in Your Heartbreak "Best New Music, stating "It's immediately appealing in the same way their debut was."
"At first, it kind of surprised me that anyone would really take notice at all," recalls Berman. "We're an indiepop band and so many of our heroes were pretty much ignored beyond really obsessive music nerds – people like us. So I never expected much more than about maybe 50 people (parents not included) to like us – but hopefully those people would like us a lot. At some point, it occurred to me that 'hey, we're not hitting a wall here, we're actually doing things right and people that might not care about out of print Rocketship singles or Sonic Youth b-sides actually like this as pop music – which to me is even more cool. We're always eager to tell people about bands that are way better than us and educate younger people about all the cool, under-appreciated music out there."
Belong's strength is the quality of the songwriting and each songs ability to sound distinct from one another while still holding together as a unified record from start to finish. Some, like the fuzz-mad "Heaven's Gonna Happen Now," "Girl of 1,000 Dreams" and statuesque "Too Tough" wouldn't sound out of place on their first LP, taking their cues from Berman's plaintive voice and liberal use of fuzz guitar. Others, like "The Body" and "My Terrible Friend" derive their power from drummer Kurt Feldman's pulsing rhythms and Peggy Wang's more pronounced keyboard lines - a winning development that helps push the band beyond their comfort zones to great effect.
One place they never deviate is in their connection with their fans. Like them, The Pains have an idealism that stems from a nearly unhealthy devotion to pop music. Talking to the members one needs to pull out their band-to-conversation calculator, as they are likely to go off about bands they love - from The Pastels, The Promise Ring and Black Tambourine to Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins and O.M.D.
"The whole idea of the album, for me, is about what it's like to not belong," says Berman. In part it's like our band – we have all these amazing opportunities, but I feel constantly out of place. Not ungrateful – but like, undeserving. On the other side it's the idea of not feeling a sense of belonging individually and how it's so great to be able to find someone else who doesn't belong so you can not belong together. That's what this band has always been about – being on the outside looking in. We somehow snuck our way into the conversation of 'real bands' even though I still think don't really belong."
Berman might want to rethink that statement — with Belong, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart have created a piece of sonic bliss that fits - for the moment, and for the long-run.
The Pains of Being Pure At Heart are:
Peggy Wang - keys + vox
Alex Naidus - bass
Kurt Feldman - drums
Kip Berman - guitar + vox
From the opening explosions of electric guitar on "Belong" ("We don't") and the sumptuously synthetic dance pop perfection of "The Body" to the prom-in-heaven chorus of "Even in Dreams" and the closing moments of the uncommonly sincere and affecting "Strange" ("…and dreams can still come true") the answer is an unqualified, resounding (and damn good sounding) "Yes."
Having moved beyond mimicking, albeit exquisitely, their impressive record collections, this album is a celebration of the possibilities of pop from New York City's pre-eminent indiepop believers. It is as much an affirmative answer to "can they" (rise above their influences? Capture the magic of their debut without repeating it? Use color on their album sleeves?) as it opens the door to the more difficult question of "how do they?"
Or more precisely, how do they make such affecting, yet unaffected pop music? How do they sound at once confidently vulnerable and carelessly thoughtful? How does a band on Slumberland make a record with two of the most recognized producers in the world and come out the other end sounding even more like themselves than before? The dichotomies are daunting, but their resolution on Belong is nothing short of stunning.
Recorded with the production and mixing team of Flood (Depeche Mode, U2) and Alan Moulder (Smashing Pumpkins, Jesus and Mary Chain, Ride), Belong unleashes added power, while retaining all the sweet sweet melodies that still hit that pop spot.
"I definitely see this album as keeping with what we started doing at the beginning, only more," says singer/guitarist Kip Berman. "More immediate, more noisy, more beautiful. We never stopped believing in noise and pop, but now we've pushed both further. Compared to the last record, It's far more visceral, more vital, more of the body. It's about feeling, not feelings."
A continuation of what they started is a good thing, considering the loyal admirers and grass-roots support for what "could be the most promising indie pop group around" (Pitchfork). Never ones to get bogged down in self-seriousness, though, what we've got here is a band who tends to spend most interviews talking about how barely-remembered underground pop bands of the 80s and 90s are far superior to their own music, eats copious amounts of Haribo Gummi Candy and plays Boggle and Basketball on the road.
"The whole experience has just been a lot of fun for us - and a huge learning process," says singer/keyboardist Peggy Wang, "We've really always gone more on intuition than technique. We've always followed our heart. My favorite bands are the ones where you can tell the people are true friends and would be hanging out together even without playing music – or at least that's what we are and I wouldn't want it any other way."
One can certainly feel the intuitiveness and immediacy in each of the album's ten tracks. But where past offerings might've cocooned front man Kip Berman's woozy tales and beckoning high tenor in layers of gauze, Belong bathes them in a cathedral-like stained-glass light, revealing the beauty and pop perfection that once hid beneath fuzz and reverb. Radiant and heavenly, the band exults in the freedom and possibilities of pushing their sound beyond simple fuzz pop motifs and, liberated from the burden of those fuzzy memories, elevates their songwriting to new heights.
"Alan Moulder and Flood had a lot to do with helping us believe in ourselves, but they didn't try to change the way we did things," says Berman. "They just helped us focus on the things that made us 'us,' and allowed us to go all-in on the things we loved and strip away the things we didn't. It was an amazingly validating experience to even get a chance to work with them, since they came into this because they saw something in our music, not because we were some kind of fat paycheck or will win them a Grammy.
Perhaps not, but The Pains of Being Pure at Heart have come a long way since their beginnings as drum-machine equipped neophytes playing a legendary 5 song, ten-minute set at Peggy's birthday party in March of 2007.
Through a self-released EP in 2007 and a series of eagerly-received singles like 2008's "Everything With You" and "Kurt Cobain's Cardigan" the band developed an intensely loyal underground following. Upon release of their self-titled debut album in 2009, that acclaim extended to well-respected cultural tastemakers like The New York Times ("sensitive and sublime, Best of 2009) Pitchfork (Best New Music, Best of 2009) Stereogum ("Addictive pop gold" Best of 2009) and The NME ("pure indiepop to hold close to your heart," Best of 2009).
Looking forward, Spin chose Belong as one of the upcoming "winter albums that matter most", and Pitchfork gave the single "Heart in Your Heartbreak "Best New Music, stating "It's immediately appealing in the same way their debut was."
"At first, it kind of surprised me that anyone would really take notice at all," recalls Berman. "We're an indiepop band and so many of our heroes were pretty much ignored beyond really obsessive music nerds – people like us. So I never expected much more than about maybe 50 people (parents not included) to like us – but hopefully those people would like us a lot. At some point, it occurred to me that 'hey, we're not hitting a wall here, we're actually doing things right and people that might not care about out of print Rocketship singles or Sonic Youth b-sides actually like this as pop music – which to me is even more cool. We're always eager to tell people about bands that are way better than us and educate younger people about all the cool, under-appreciated music out there."
Belong's strength is the quality of the songwriting and each songs ability to sound distinct from one another while still holding together as a unified record from start to finish. Some, like the fuzz-mad "Heaven's Gonna Happen Now," "Girl of 1,000 Dreams" and statuesque "Too Tough" wouldn't sound out of place on their first LP, taking their cues from Berman's plaintive voice and liberal use of fuzz guitar. Others, like "The Body" and "My Terrible Friend" derive their power from drummer Kurt Feldman's pulsing rhythms and Peggy Wang's more pronounced keyboard lines - a winning development that helps push the band beyond their comfort zones to great effect.
One place they never deviate is in their connection with their fans. Like them, The Pains have an idealism that stems from a nearly unhealthy devotion to pop music. Talking to the members one needs to pull out their band-to-conversation calculator, as they are likely to go off about bands they love - from The Pastels, The Promise Ring and Black Tambourine to Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins and O.M.D.
"The whole idea of the album, for me, is about what it's like to not belong," says Berman. In part it's like our band – we have all these amazing opportunities, but I feel constantly out of place. Not ungrateful – but like, undeserving. On the other side it's the idea of not feeling a sense of belonging individually and how it's so great to be able to find someone else who doesn't belong so you can not belong together. That's what this band has always been about – being on the outside looking in. We somehow snuck our way into the conversation of 'real bands' even though I still think don't really belong."
Berman might want to rethink that statement — with Belong, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart have created a piece of sonic bliss that fits - for the moment, and for the long-run.
The Pains of Being Pure At Heart are:
Peggy Wang - keys + vox
Alex Naidus - bass
Kurt Feldman - drums
Kip Berman - guitar + vox
A Place to Bury Strangers
A Place To Bury Strangers have often been called “the loudest band in New York”. This may very well be the case, but unlike much so-called “loud” rock and roll that’s out there, APTBS is not loud simply for the sake of it. The sonically overdriven sound they’ve accomplished is no clumsy accident, but a carefully cultivated and well-maintained entity all its own, fostered by an unbridled passion that’s clearly evident in every live show they play and each recording they make. A Place To Bury Strangers does not so much play songs as allow them to pour out. They are songs about longing, heartbreak and confusion played extremely well and at a passionately loud volume.
While there are obvious reference points: Pornography-era Cure, early Ride, My Bloody Valentine, and pre-1990s Jesus and Mary Chain, the sound is all their own, in part due to singer/guitarist Oliver Ackermann’s day job of building custom guitar pedals (see deathbyaudio.net). Coupled with the solid bass of Jono Mofo and the relentless drumming of Jay Space, the APTBS team is a force to reckon with.
Since forming in 2004, A Place to Bury Strangers had been developing its stellar live reputation in New York City by its constant bombardment of shows. In early April of 2007 the band was rewarded with the opportunity to open for one of their major influences, the Jesus & Mary Chain at Webster Hall. This was quickly followed by another high profile opening slot for the Brian Jonestown Massacre at same venue.
Following the release of their self titled debut album in August of 2007 on Killer Pimp Records, the band accrued rave reviews in a numerous publications including a Best New Music and an 8.4 rating in Pitchfork. The album wound up being one of the top 20 best reviewed records of 2007 according to Metacritic and won Rock album of the year on Tunecore.
The band then rocketed into public consciousness in 2008. Highlights include a full US/Canadian tour with Holy F**k in February/March and being THE band to see at SXSW. This was followed in May by their first full European/UK which culminated in a legendary appearance at the Primavera Festival in Barcelona. That summer the band were handpicked by Trent Reznor to support Nine Inch Nails on an arena tour of the US and appeared at the Oya Festival where they got to play with another of their heroes, the recently reunited My Bloody Valentine.
While there are obvious reference points: Pornography-era Cure, early Ride, My Bloody Valentine, and pre-1990s Jesus and Mary Chain, the sound is all their own, in part due to singer/guitarist Oliver Ackermann’s day job of building custom guitar pedals (see deathbyaudio.net). Coupled with the solid bass of Jono Mofo and the relentless drumming of Jay Space, the APTBS team is a force to reckon with.
Since forming in 2004, A Place to Bury Strangers had been developing its stellar live reputation in New York City by its constant bombardment of shows. In early April of 2007 the band was rewarded with the opportunity to open for one of their major influences, the Jesus & Mary Chain at Webster Hall. This was quickly followed by another high profile opening slot for the Brian Jonestown Massacre at same venue.
Following the release of their self titled debut album in August of 2007 on Killer Pimp Records, the band accrued rave reviews in a numerous publications including a Best New Music and an 8.4 rating in Pitchfork. The album wound up being one of the top 20 best reviewed records of 2007 according to Metacritic and won Rock album of the year on Tunecore.
The band then rocketed into public consciousness in 2008. Highlights include a full US/Canadian tour with Holy F**k in February/March and being THE band to see at SXSW. This was followed in May by their first full European/UK which culminated in a legendary appearance at the Primavera Festival in Barcelona. That summer the band were handpicked by Trent Reznor to support Nine Inch Nails on an arena tour of the US and appeared at the Oya Festival where they got to play with another of their heroes, the recently reunited My Bloody Valentine.
