Sleigh Bells - Treats
Sleigh Bells, the much-buzzed-about Brooklyn noise pop duo of guitarist/producer Derek Miller and singer Alexis Krauss, have chosen the perfect album title and cover art to represent and explain the music on this, their debut album. The cover art is a representation of sound and genre (face-melting pop—get it?) while the title illustrates how to best approach listening to these songs. Allow me to explain by way of an obvious metaphor. Now, I loves me some barbecue ribs and chocolate cake. In fact, a meal centered around really good ribs and chocolate cake might be one of my all-time favorite meals. I like these foods because they’re rich, hearty, and exceedingly flavorful, but by the very nature of their specific appeal, they have to be special occasion foods. If I ate them for every meal, the constant exposure to those intense, delicious flavors would diminish their value (it would take a long time, but I might even get sick of eating altogether). More importantly, unhealthy things would start happening to my body. Too much of a good thing is bad for you, which is why those foods are best considered treats instead of dietary staples.
Sleigh Bells’ Treats works the same way. The band’s striking combination of heavy, punishing rhythms, singsongy pop sweetness, and ear-bleeding levels of distortion and noise is a drastic intensification of two of the core fundamentals of rock ‘n roll: it’s catchy and loud. Too much of this stuff can dull your appreciation for just how powerful it is (which is also why I wouldn’t count on an equally awesome second album from them), and besides, the overdriven frequencies of this sound are physically damaging to the inner ear, even at low volumes. There’s been an increasing amount of talk in recent years about the so-called “loudness war,” which centers around the tendency of contemporary mainstream pop and rock engineers to compress the finer details out of the music they’re recording, thus creating ‘louder,’ more attention-grabbing sounds at the price of sonic nuance and character. Many critics and listeners have placed Sleigh Bells atop this discussion, alternatively applauding or deriding them for bringing the loudness war to its sonic conclusion. They’ve even been called contrived and gimmicky, but to me, the album title shows that Sleigh Bells artfully acknowledge how ridiculously extreme their music is and accept their place as the chocolate cake in a balanced musical diet. In controlled doses (say about thirty two minutes?), they can be downright lethal.
When we first heard opener “Tell ‘Em” a couple weeks ago, I worried that the song’s slick, metallic sheen and close-mic’ed sentiments of encouragement (“You can do your best today”) were the undesirable trap door away from the unforgiving squall of their early demos. Context, as it turns out, makes all the difference in the world, as placing “Tell ‘Em” at the beginning frames it not as a way out of Sleigh Bells’ prototype sound, but as the deceptive lure into an album that manages to one-up those hype-fueling CD-Rs in nearly every department. Another pleasant surprise here is that the band seems intent on crafting an album, one with recognizable shifts in tone and pacing. “Kids,” a scuzzed-up, beat-heavy rerecording of “Beach Girls,” follows “Tell ‘Em” with a brash, charismatic girlishness (pardon the expression), especially in its spoken-word interludes—“Wait, did I forget my sunglasses? Nope, got ‘em!” or the giggling “Put the music on, I’ma start dancing!” The song’s buzzing synths and echoing hand claps keep it from appearing too polished, but it doesn’t approach the sheer heaviness that awaits us on Treats’ back end.
“Riot Rhythm” introduces Miller’s signature piercing, fire-engine guitar tone, mixed with marchy drums and a cheer squad of Krausses (“You gotta march!” just in case you couldn’t figure it out). The song implies something along the lines of turning a high school pep rally into a riot—kinda the theme of the whole record, really, which they make clear with the aforementioned cover art (and which reminds me of a certain famous grunge video). Former shouty demo “Infinity Guitars” gets a badass makeover, adding an extra layer of fuzz on the song’s jump-roping first half, all of which gets obliterated by the world’s loudest rock band in the last 30 seconds. It’s a big goosebump moment on Treats, one that lets you know Sleigh Bells don’t plan on weakening their assault one bit. It’s a well-placed reminder, too, since they throw their three ‘softest’ songs in right after it. “Run the Heart” balances soaring synth loops with muted, scratchy guitar and low-end buzz, while “Rachel” ditches heavy beats altogether, letting it’s rave-inspired synth serve as Krauss’ sole company as she navigates a surprisingly morbid, mournful, and effecting melody.
Funkadelic-sampling groover “Ring Ring” (renamed “Rill Rill”) gets spruced up with sustained bell tones and remains one of Sleigh Bells’ most beguiling and accessible songs. It’s as well-placed as “Infinity Guitars,” too. Having spent the bulk of the record thus far brandishing their sweet, charming side, Miller and Krauss spend the rest of Treats bashing the living daylights out of us. Fan favorites “Crown on the Ground” and “A/B Machines” both get slightly tweaked, with “Crown” cleaning up Krauss’ lead a bit and cranking the hand claps and “Machines” inheriting the trademark processed siren guitar and harder-hitting drum sounds. Neither song loses an ounce of forceful danceability, and once you get used to the modified arrangements they speak more effectively than the sometimes-muddy demos. “Straight A’s” pushes the band to their noisy rock extreme, functioning more like the hardcore punk Miller once played in Florida outfit Poison the Well, but the digital warping of Krauss’ shouts and shades of tambourine jangle give it a welcome place on Sleigh Bell’s binary spectrum. The closing title track is another fist-pumper that works a lustrous modern R&B melody around crunchy, live-sounding guitar, ending suddenly without fuss or pomp.
Treats is a fascinatingly singular work, its flat-out rudimentary elements congealing into some of the most lovably harsh and intense music you’ll find anywhere. While contemporary punk and metal are too busy waxing deadly self-serious and top 40 pop doesn’t have the minerals to take any real risks, Sleigh Bells have the courage to smile wider and louder. For the moment, they let us have our cake and eat it too.
