Rote of Terror

What bothers me about “Comeback Kid,” as well as its predecessor “Born to Lose,” are the ways in which Sleigh Bells’ conception of how a song can work seems to be narrowing. Thinking back to their first cruddy CD-R demos, part of what excited me was the (temporary) sense that they wanted to take a crack at re-imagining not only volume and dynamics, but the ways that general realms of pop and rock could interact. The original mix of “A/B Machines” is the best example. There, Krauss’ vocal was set on a loop, not quite droning but not totally teenage and sassy, either. The lyric came off tech-sexy and aloof, like a sample of some other tune recontextualized by Miller’s production. His emergency siren squall only resembled a guitar in the song’s ‘quieter’ moments, and looping it the same way as the vocals helped to abstract it from the fingers-and-strings physicality of a rock guitar. “A/B Machines” was a dance track built with the tools—electric guitar, noise, aggression—of a hardcore punk song, a fundamentally different approach to music-making than the somewhat skin-deep affectations of these first two songs from Reign of Terror. Here, despite maximal distortion white-washing the guitar tone almost to death, it’s played conventionally as a riff of flat, alternating chords. The drums, too, are exactly what a hardcore punk drummer would play except for the minor fact of their being programmed with synthetic sounds. Both “Comeback Kid” and “Born to Lose” follow the lead of Treats’ weakest, most one-dimensional songs (all of which still trump these), perhaps relying too heavily on the now-stale novelty of the band’s hardcore-meets-teenpop genesis. As pop songs they’re hummy and under-written in an attempt to excuse the stock sound, and as noisy rock songs they’re flatlined by the half-hearted stab at a deeper, ‘balanced’ mix. Neither one is particularly danceable. I realize Sleigh Bells isn’t a band that merits critical fire for not being arty enough, but these songs sound like a retreat from something that could have been much greater than the sum of its parts.

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    1. jakec said: I agree with your points but at the same time I’m really digging “Comeback Kid”, and the fact of those two things makes me concerned that the album, while initially satisfying, won’t stand up to repeated listens like Treats.
    2. microphoneheartbeats reblogged this from popcornnoises and added:
      I haven’t heard Comeback Kid yet...Lose. Sleigh Bells used
    3. meltedspinningplastic said: dead on.
    4. popcornnoises posted this

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