Exploding Head, the second album from New York’s A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS, doesn’t much expand on the sound of the first. The trio still specializes in noisemongering acid pop, with bright, singalong melodies dragged through a junkyard of metal shards and toxic waste, like the JESUS & MARY CHAIN after taking the brown acid. Names like LOOP, SPACEMEN 3 and BAILTER SPACE will inevitably come up in discussion, but there’s more to APtBS than sonic terrorism. There’s a clear line running from the band’s rhythm section to the pulse of NEW ORDER and the gothic overtones of JOY DIVISION, and the combination of danceable melancholy and joyful skronk gives the band its own distinctive persona. “Everything Always Goes Wrong,” “In Your Heart” and “Keep Slipping Away” would be hits in a universe that better accepted miscegenation between gossamer pop and savage psychedelia. As it stands, Exploding Head is content to simply live up to its own titular ambitions.
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