The Boy I Used to Be "Grip" EP

[£4.99 for Cassette or Download // https://pieandvinylrecords.bandcamp.com/album/grip-ep]

Video for "Try": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XglvILdz6gY&feature=youtu.be

I spent quite a while trying to think of the name of the band that sings "All the little kids with the pumped up kicks" because it's been quite a while since I listened to that band, but luckily for The Boy I Used to Be their name is still fresh in my mind and so they shouldn't suffer a similar fate of being that one hit wonder (Though it could be more a case of them having one EP I review and then they go unnoticed and forgotten after that)

In fact, this EP, "Grip", should solidify them as some sort of great rock band and since they have a habit of selling out of cassettes you're going to want to get your hands on this one early.    It's somewhere between Wheatus and Local H, Soul Coughing and Replacements.    There is a bit more shoegaze on here than I remember previously but then again the song "Rust" also has hints of Marilyn Manson's "Lunchbox" so it kind of balances itself out, no?

With other bands such as Silversun Pickups present the one thing you need to know is that for all of their rock influences none of them are bad and this mix of them makes for a stellar EP at that.   I'm not really laughing at the song title "Pissy Elliott" (probably created before the Super Bowl) but then again they also have "Maucauly Sulkin'" so who cares about song titles anyway, right?

A Place to Bury Strangers "Transfixiation" (Dead Oceans Records)

I've reviewed A Place to Bury Strangers twice before but both times have been brief and comments about them on the whole rather than the specific album I think.   So I felt that this was as good a place as any to give A Place to Bury Strangers a sort of proper review if only because this is that type of album that makes me want to give it a proper review.  (I could say that they've grown or evolved since I started listening to them but I'm not going to get into something that cliche)

With fuzzy guitars APTBS lands somewhere between garage and psychedelic rock n roll.    They remind me a lot of The Doors at times, yet on a song like "Deeper" they can get even darker and bring out a Marilyn Manson influence.     As other songs can have the static trembling in the guitar notes, "Deeper" also breaks down into sheer pandamonium by the end.

On a song such as "I'm so Clean" the Priests influence definitely comes out.   I also really like "We've Come So Far" if only because the way that the chorus is broken up into "I feel / right now / we've come / so far".     It' just another demonstration of how A Place to Bury Strangers manages to walk that fine line between commercial appeal and not.

Whether you listen to something on the modern rock radio charts or "college radio" (which seems to take on its own genre) or even if you're like me and are all over the place with what you happen to listen to musically (and how) then I still think there is something within these songs you can come to appreciate.  

Now the question is whether or not this is the first time that I've been able to write such a review about this music simply because it is the first time that I've heard it become this good.   Either way, this could be one of my favorite albums not just of 2015 but of all time.