A Place To Bury Strangers, Auckland NZ, 2019

A Place To Bury Strangers

7th March 2019
Hollywood Theatre, Auckland, New Zealand.

Review by Kate Powell. Photography by Richard Myburgh.

What would you do if the world was burning down? If you wanted to dance to a damning soundtrack, then last night’s performance by A Place to Bury Strangers (APTBS) and Wax Chattels at the sumptuous Hollywood Avonadale would have been nothing short of perfection. Merging the glamourous backdrop of yesteryear with raw, visceral performances that forced you to be in the present, this was a show for the ages.

Openers Wax Chattels are one of New Zealand’s most exciting indie acts in recent years and a perfect choice to start the evening off. Freshly nominated for the hotly-contested Taite Prize, the anticipation in the air was palpable as they took to the stage. They asked us to Stay Disappointed but they’re too talented to let this reviewer down.

Their melodic yet ruthlessly dissonant sound – although captured well on their self-titled debut EP is meant to be heard live, because it is then you can truly appreciate the composition tension that makes this band so great. As Jazz school graduates, they all possess the musical knowledge and skill required to ultilise organised chaos in their music writing. The thrill of listening to them is that there is the constant threat that they will spiral into disarray. But Wax Chattels manage to keep the sound and energy both contained yet on edge.

Keyboardist and Vocalist Peter Ruddell maintains this tension spectacularly well live. Immaculately dressed in tailored black clothes and coiffed hair, his art school elegance is only amplified by his bitingly nihilistic lyrics. This juxtaposes wonderfully well with his unhinged keyboard playing and unpredictable vocal performance. The only other artist who walks the same line between elegance and chaos so well is Nick Cave. Bassist and Vocalist Amanda Cheng kept her cool, her basslines offering the one vital constant throughout their set. It was really unfortunate that the sound was bad for Career; usually her breathy vocals swirl around a dirge before descending into anarchy. However last night, her vocals sounded too pushed back into the mix and were lost. Drummer Tom Leggett was a frenetic force, balancing blast beats and loose drum work with ease. Watching their shadows dance across the opulently decorated walls of the Hollywood Avondale, there was a sense of the end of days that would have made Emperor Nero proud. A compelling watch.

If Wax Chattels turned the intensity up to 11, then A Place to Bury Strangers broke the dial and set the amp on fire. Last in New Zealand for a legendary performance at The Kings Arms (RIP) in 2015, they have returned to our fair shores touting a mind melting album – 2018’s Pinned and a subsequent remix album, aptly named Repinned.

It’s going to sound clichéd, but when going to an A Place to Bury Strangers gig, you need to prepare yourself to expect the unexpected; to keep your mind open and ears plugged. They are notorious for not writing set lists. Instead, they offer audiences unpredictable performances that bristle with urgency and aural assault; last night, they delivered this with taunt, relentless perfection. It takes real skill to be this anarchic and APTBS delivered a masterclass.

Within minutes of the first song, guitars were being destroyed and limbs were flailing with reckless abandon courtesy of Kiwi-done-good Dion Lunadon (The D4, Nothing at All) on bass and founding guitarist/ Oliver Ackerman. Together, they layered their sound to menacing heights before bringing it crashing around the audience’s ears time and time again, their chaos beautifully tempered by Lia Simone Braswell’s powerfully consistent drumbeat. That they maintained that energy for an hour and a half was nothing short of a miracle.

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote “there may be more beautiful times, but this is ours….And lets do everything with it. Everything.” This ode to living in the present also embodies everything that makes APTBS live performance so spectacular. They embrace imperfection and unpredictability, pushing the live experience to always engaging, occasionally uncomfortable brinks created to both overload and deprive your senses. By building up and tearing down walls of sound, they create music that is meant to be felt rather than heard and at frequencies that vibrate your very being. Frenetic strobe lighting and abrupt changes in tempo added a nausea-inducing quality that kept the audience on their toes. It must be said that the acoustics of the Hollywood Avondale bore the weight of ABTPS’s dystopic sound wonderfully well, the juxtaposition of place only adding to the unsettling charm of the evening.

A spectacularly disturbing show.

Were you there at the Hollywood Theatre for this extreme experimental noise rock gig? Or have you seen A Place To Bury Strangers perform live somewhere else before? Tell us about it in the comments below!

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