A Place To Bury Strangers – Keep Slipping Away

Reviewed By Mark Gomersall

“Keep Slipping Away” is the new single taken from A Place To Bury Strangers fantastic sophomore album, “Exploding Head”. The fact this song wasn’t the first to be released from the album has always surprised me as it’s easily the catchiest thing the band has ever written. Despite this it still keeps the bands familiar style and is actually a very tense listen. It’s not a song that makes you feel comfortable, but in a good way. It’s a song that gets blood pumping through you, it feels like it could just explode into sheer anarchy at any moment and the fact it doesn’t (especially when put next to other APTBS material) really adds to eeriness of the song. The recurring guitar riff is a thing of absolute beauty, making the song feel like a classic from the get-go. I will admit, it’s not all perfect, the song does sound maybe a bit too familiar, in part to the fact that without the riff it’d actually be suspiciously similar to previous APTBS single “I Know I’ll See You” from their debut album.

The b-side, “Hit The Ground” is also a poor point. Despite another massive riff to open things, the band seems more content on providing their notorious ‘wall of sound’ as apposed to writing a good tune. It’s still perfectly listenable, but there’s a very clear reason it’s a b-side. On top of this there’s a selection of remixes of “Keep Slipping” away, the two standouts being the “South Central remix”, which takes a more dance-y approach with robotic twinged vocals and a pounding synth bassline; and the “Maps remix”, which feels like those old New Order b-sides where they’d take a song and remix it into something totally different.

4/5