New York-based band A Place To Bury Strangers release new single/video “You Got Me” from their upcoming seventh album Synthesizer, out October 4 via Dedstrange Records. Following lead single “Disgust,” which “sounds as pleasant and danceable as it is repulsive and garbled” (Paste), “You Got Me” follows suit. The catchy tune is representative of a photo from a perfect summer of love, lust, escaping the crowd, and getting lost in the night. Midway through the track, a field recording of one of those days on the beach can be heard as a 747 zooms through the sky above. Play it loud, play it now.
Synthesizer is the title of the album, but it’s also a physical entity, a synth made specifically for A Place to Bury Strangers’ seventh album (a synth you too can (partially) own if you buy the record on vinyl). In an era of music making where so little is DIY and so much is left to AI, the most important thing is to never set foot in a practice room or home studio and make something that feels intentionally chaotic, messy, and human. Synthesizer is a record that celebrates spontaneous and natural sounds, the kind of music that can only come from collaboration and community.
The writing sessions for Synthesizer began at the band’s Queens studio, shortly after the release of See Through You in 2022. The band reformed with a new lineup, Ackermann still at the helm, now with his friends John and Sandra Fedowitz. This new formation of the band was inspirational for Ackermann: “It felt like something fresh,” he says, “I wanted to write songs that everyone would want to play.” Indeed, the sense of connection is felt throughout the record. Synthesizer feels very much like a record of reinvention, a record where you take a carefully refined aesthetic and sound and break it wide open, gut it, and reinvent it. And of course, to reinvent your sound even a little bit, you have to build a new instrument too, so again, the synth. The resulting record is romantic, colorful, loud as hell, and one of A Place to Bury Strangers’ most live-sounding records to date.
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