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By Jon Pareles
Dear listeners,
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.
Feel like dynamite,
Jon
Listen along while you read.
1. Sleigh Bells: “Infinity Guitars”
“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 ahs, Krauss also offers just enough melody to hint at playfulness.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
2. The Kinks: “All Day and All of the Night”
Where had I heard a guitar sound that was barbed and boxed-in like “Infinity Guitars”? Oh, right: On this 1964 single by the Kinks. There were no digital plug-ins back then, just amps and microphones. That buzzy, squalling guitar distortion was physical; Dave Davies slashed his amp’s speaker cone with a razor. “As it vibrated it produced a distorted and jagged roar,” he wrote in “Kink — An Autobiography.” He added, “A sound was born, but I didn’t know it at the time.”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
3. Sleigh Bells: “Comeback Kid”
Sleigh Bells polished their blend of sweetness and brute force on their second album, “Reign of Terror,” in 2012. “Comeback Kid” is a walloping pep talk. The beat is a double-time barrage with snares that sound like gunshots; chain-saw power chords mesh with a perky synthesizer hook. Krauss stays calm amid the onslaught, using an airy melody to advise, “You’re gone away but you’ll come back someday / I know it’s hard but you’ve gotta deal with it.”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
4. The Go-Go’s: “We Got the Beat”
The Go-Go’s connected punk to pop in the early 1980s, reaching back to surf-rock and Motown but still unleashing a punky shout or two, as they did in “We Got the Beat.” Written by their lead guitarist, Charlotte Caffey, the song envisioned everybody as dancing, even people just “walking down the street.” It opens with a blunt, authoritative backbeat, sets out its bass line as a hook, cites vintage go-go-girl dances (the Pony, the Watusi) and invites everyone to join the party.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
5. Big Black: “L Dopa”
Steve Albini’s punk-electronic band Big Black revved up a relentless drum machine behind ferociously noisy guitars — a favorite Sleigh Bells tactic. The narrator of “L Dopa” is a patient with sleeping sickness, unwillingly awakened by the drug L Dopa — and furious about it.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. Sleigh Bells: “Locust Laced”
“I feel like dynamite / I feel like dying tonight,” Krauss sings over buoyant handclaps in “Locust Laced,” from the 2021 album “Texis.” The song bristles with dichotomies. Miller’s guitars are all speed and muscle, delivering machine-gun bursts of rhythm chords and zooming glissandos. But the verses include pleas like “Crush my fate I’m losing breath / Send me an angel of death.”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
7. Sleigh Bells: “Lightning Turns Sawdust Gold”
Electronics, not guitars, dominate this desperate love song from Sleigh Bells’ 2016 album, “Jessica Rabbit.” In a vast, heaving, synthetic soundscape, Krauss pushes her voice until it breaks, and she pleads, “Take a deep breath before you do something drastic.” At the beginning and near the end, there’s sobbing in the mix, abandoning any chipper facade.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
8. Illuminati Hotties featuring Cavetown: “Didn’t”
Sarah Tudzin, the songwriter and producer behind Illuminati Hotties, revels (like Sleigh Bells) in quick-change dynamics: a quiet exposed sound followed by a full-spectrum attack, a diffident verse exploding into a big chorus. “Didn’t” — with a guest verse from Cavetown (Robin Daniel Skinner) — jumps between breathy insecurities and defiant, power-chorded renunciation: “What if I just didn’t do it?”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
9. Beck: “Girl”
Beck has been knocking together genres since the 1990s. “Girl,” from his 2005 album “Guero,” opens with a sound Sleigh Bells have also featured: chiptunes, harking back to the low-resolution tunes played by the primitive circuits built into hand-held video games. With slide guitar adding a rustic touch, “Girl” turns into a bouncy folk-rock song that might sound downright affectionate — except that the narrator is planning the girl’s murder.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
10. 100 gecs: “Dumbest Girl Alive”
100 gecs — the duo of Dylan Brady and Laura Les — are deadpan hyperpop experts; they crash-test all sorts of sounds and top them with sardonic, absurd lyrics. “Dumbest Girl Alive” is full of fake-outs: a grandiose electronic intro punctured by gunshots, a distorted guitar riff that sometimes has a note replaced by chiptune blips. Then, over a ticking drum-machine beat and a blotchy electronic bass line, Les sings — computer-tweaked of course — about how “I always get it wrong.” For two minutes and six seconds, the slapstick timing is impeccable.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
11. Sleigh Bells: “Bunky Pop”
The song that opens “Bunky Becky Birthday Boy” sounds like a blowout, but it’s a farewell to Krauss’s dog nicknamed Becky, who died in 2023. “Nights are long, here without you,” she sings. “Best girl in the world.” But with frenetic programmed drums, hopping chiptune-like arpeggios, monumental guitar chords and big harmony choruses, Krauss resolutely looks ahead: “Can’t sit still, can’t go in reverse,” she declares.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
12. Sleigh Bells: “This Summer”
The prospect of annihilation — “Power trip type might bomb the masses” — offers one last chance at “fun now” in this song from “Bunky Becky Birthday Boy.” Little electronic plinks quickly give way to a juggernaut of guitars playing bright major chords. Krauss’s multitracked voice blithely warns, “This summer might be your last.” It’s a blast — possibly nuclear.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
The Amplifier Playlist
“Getting Loud With Sleigh Bells and Beyond” track list
Track 1: Sleigh Bells, “Infinity Guitars”
Track 2: The Kinks, “All Day and All of the Night”
Track 3: Sleigh Bells, “Comeback Kid”
Track 4: The Go-Go’s, “We Got the Beat”
Track 5: Big Black, “L Dopa”
Track 6: Sleigh Bells, “Locust Laced”
Track 7: Sleigh Bells, “Lightning Turns Sawdust Gold”
Track 8: Illuminati Hotties featuring Cavetown, “Didn’t”
Track 9: Beck, “Girl”
Track 10: 100 gecs, “Dumbest Girl Alive”
Track 11: Sleigh Bells, “Bunky Pop”
Track 12: Sleigh Bells, “This Summer”
Jon Pareles has been The Times’s chief pop music critic since 1988. He studied music, played in rock, jazz and classical groups and was a college-radio disc jockey. He was previously an editor at Rolling Stone and the Village Voice.
The post Getting Loud With Sleigh Bells and Beyond appeared first on New York Times.
