Getting Loud With Sleigh Bells and Beyond
Jon Pareles here, sitting in while Lindsay is on book leave. This week cranks The Amplifier all the way up — and then further into overload.
Sleigh Bells, the duo of Alexis Krauss and Derek Miller, have just released their sixth album, 'Bunky Becky Birthday Boy.' Like the rest of their catalog, the new album is a recombinant bash, slamming together selected elements of loud and louder styles — punk, metal, grunge, hip-hop, electro, glam, garage-rock — with the suddenness of digital edits. Along with their sonic impact, Sleigh Bells songs also deal in emotional extremes, jumping between jubilation and sorrow, exhilaration and despair, deep loneliness and shout-along community.
With their first singles in 2009, Sleigh Bells presaged the studio-tweaked, genre-hopping, whiz-bang mash-ups of hyperpop — ideas and strategies that, more than a decade later, are often taken for granted. The juxtapositions are startling; they also hold decades of allusions. This playlist mingles Sleigh Bells songs with what might be the band's influences and protégés — some roots and offshoots, and all pure guesswork.
'Infinity Guitars,' from Sleigh Bells' 2010 debut album, 'Treats,' sets out the band's sound in the rawest lo-fi. Krauss might be singing about toxic masculinity in the terse lyrics she shouts: 'Street wars, straight men / Cowboys, Indians.' Everything is pushed into distortion: guitars, vocals, percussion, stereo handclaps. But with some wordless ah s, Krauss also offers just enough melody to hint at playfulness.
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