About halfway through Exploding Head you really start to forget why A Place to Bury Strangers sounded so exciting on their self-titled debut two years ago. Not exactly what one wants to hear when talking about an anticipated sophomore release, especially one with a title that promises to literally split your fucking wig, or at very least serve as an alternate soundtrack to (I'm guessing was a little too on-the-nose). While is no washout-- right around "Keep Slipping Away", the back half picks up where the debut left off, full of inspired pieces of paranoia-inducing industrial guitar noise and moribund pop textures-- it too often seems like a misguided attempt to connect dots for the listener. On the debut, much of the fun came from sifting through all that ball-retracting dissonance and coming out with handfuls of melodic goop. Here, after eliminating some of the harsher textures in favor of cleanlier, well-positioned rawk tunes, the music is packed with palatable songs that spook instead of uncomfortable ones that seriously unnerve. In other words, if we're still classifying A Place to Bury Strangers as Jesus and Mary Chain revivalists, it's far too early in their career for this to be their .