Imagine, for a second, that you are standing at the top of the skyscraper that’s depicted on the new of the new A Place to Bury Strangers album, so high up that you can’t see the ground. Should you lose your balance and fall, you know it’s over, but it’s not what happens when you come crashing to earth that you should be worried about, because it’s the fall that’s gonna kill you. In a way, this seems to sum up the Brooklyn noise-rock trio’s third album more succinctly than anything else I could write; ‘Worship’ is concerned with the fall, the slow, tortuous descent to earth, the leap into the great unknown.
Chances are that you won’t listen to a more overwhelming record this year. Here is an album that chews you up and spits you out with little care for consequence: a dark, visceral, brooding, aural assault kind of album. It’s almost relentless. The pounding drums and crushing guitars of opener ‘Alone’, bolstered by despairing lyrics and an overall sense of resignation, set the tone of an album that is, in one respect, extremely difficult, but in another, is brilliantly accessible; for those melodies that you hear, buried beneath the walls of sound, are pure pop. Lead single ‘You are the One’ is a case in point; it is in fact one of the more restrained moments on ‘Worship’, but its sense of claustrophobic anxiety is all over the album, and its bass riff is absolutely golden.
There are a few other moments on the album when the band go for sheer accessibility above anything else: ‘And I’m Up’ ranks among their most infectious songs, its driving drums and dreamy chord progression combining to create something intoxicating. Even when Oliver Ackerman’s vocals are swathed in echoey reverb (as they are for the majority of the album), the pessimistic nature of his lyrics becomes quite clear. ‘Either way I choose, the choice is wrong; so I choose wrong, always choose wrong / Sometimes, I should realise that it’s best not to hold back on what I want to say.’ Not that he’s one for pulling his punches; the debilitating noise of ‘Revenge’ is a platform for some of his darkest utterances to date.
‘Worship’ may be aggressive and punchy, but there are moments of respite, not least on the two-part album centrepiece ‘Dissolved’, which coasts along upon a crystalline melody for three minutes, before the tempo doubles, and the band let their post-punk side out for the remainder of the song. Bass and drums are once again prominent, but the reason that its one of the band’s finest moments to date is precisely because it’s so different (in overall sound, not mood or lyrical content) to all that it’s surrounded by. It is at the centre of an album light on hope and positivity, but rarely has music this ferocious and nihilistic been delivered with such grace. ‘Worship’ is at times incredibly hard to bear, but there are hidden depths to its darkness which make it all the more appealing.
Worship is released next Monday on Dead Oceans.
Posted by Gareth O’Malley
