There's no denying that A Place to Bury Strangers' Oliver Ackermann knows his way around an effects pedal; pretty much every review of the New York noise-rock trio becomes a de facto advertisement for his guitar-gadgets company, Death by Audio. But three albums in, Ackermann is still learning his way around a pop song: Where 2009's Exploding Head found A Place to Bury Strangers becoming a little less shy about letting their melodies poke through the static, this year's Onwards to the Wall EP saw Ackermann reverting to a stern-faced, sunglasses-indoors emotional distance and taking sanctuary within the band's strobe-lit squall. The apparent backsliding again raises the question of whether there's something more to the band than just the most exquisitely sculpted feedback that the Edge's money can buy.
The title of A Place to Bury Strangers' third album, Worship, is especially rich coming from a band that's never tried to mask its reverence for the alt-rock holy trinity of Joy Division, the Jesus and Mary Chain, and My Bloody Valentine; A Place to Bury Strangers songs are really differentiated only by which of those touchstones they choose to lean on more at any given moment. But while the aforementioned influences are all present and accounted for here, there's a textural richness and emotional depth to Worship that wasn't always apparent on the band's previous albums.
For a guy who effectively makes a living selling noise to other guitar players, Ackermann's rationing out his supply in more controlled quantities this time out, whether deploying sporadic electric shocks and brown-note frequencies to disrupt the hard-charging opener "Alone", or gradually easing off the introductory fuzz fanfare of "Fear" to reveal the song's mysterious, canyon-deep expanse. But while A Place to Bury Strangers take the brave step of allowing the distortion to dissipate, the unfettered view isn't always flattering: Ackermann's lyrics can sound like they were torn out of a bored, trench-coated high-school kid's notebook, with the cyber-punk fantasia of "Mind Control" and I-want-to-die miserablism of "Why I Can't Cry Anymore" verging on goth parody. (I'd also add the one-note aggression of "Revenge" to that list, but it's salvaged by an awesome "You Made Me Realise"-style breakdown/blast-off that will no doubt gash many a head in concert.)
Hopefully, Worship will prove to be a transitory album, because its best songs feel like the work of another band entirely: "Dissolved" begins as a glistening, atmospheric ballad that suddenly shifts partway into a brisk, early-Cure backbeat, with Ackermann picking out an untreated, beautifully melancholic melody on his guitar, while the forlorn, post-breakup lament "And I'm Up" follows that lead further to showcase Ackermann's most verbose, frank, and heart-rending lyric sheet to date. For a few minutes there, A Place to Bury Strangers feel less like a no-brainer choice to open a Nine Inch Nails arena tour, and more like a band spiritually in tune with the intimate indie pop of Wild Nothing and the like. And suddenly, it becomes a lot easier to imagine a future where A Place to Bury Strangers are known less for their effects pedals than the affect they peddle.
