Brooklyn’s A Place to Bury Strangers recently announced their fifth album Pinned, which features the grimly electrifying opener “Never Coming Back.” Today, they return with “There’s Only One of Us,” melding slinking bass, group vocals, a pummeling, fuzzed-out chorus riff, and acrid touches of guitar and keyboard into what guitarist Oliver Ackermann describes as a celebration of life: “I am a person. We are all animals. We are all on this planet. This planet is one of billions speeding through space. It is incredible to be alive.”
The enigmatic, dramatically lit video features the trio locked into a violently energetic performance as they pile their gear into a tower. In a statement, director Elizabeth Skadden said she was inspired by the song’s aggressive, martial qualities:
“The inspiration comes from the foghorn bass line, military drum beat, and kamikaze guitars that intimate a war taking place. Talking to the band, I learned the ‘war’ was people under the siege of making a creative project. The work the band does to create the song is expressed in the ‘totem’ built over the course of the music video. Visually, I broke the song into its sonic elements and assigned each its own visual, such as the shifting red and blue lights. The lighting setups were inspired by a Fad Gadget performance from the 1980s, and films by Pedro Almodovar and Kathryn Bigelow.”
Pinned is out April 13 from Dead Oceans. Watch “There’s Only One of Us” below.
