Wednesday, 26 January 2011
Monday, 17 January 2011
Sleigh Bells @ Audio - 20th November 2010
First published in the Brighton Source
Since the advent of the noughties with its MySpace, YouTube and viral marketing, meteoric rises to fame have become common place for many bands, but it’s safe to say even without these developments Sleigh Bells would still have become so popular so quickly. Their debut album 'Treats' has accrued positive reviews from harsh music critics as much as fan-boy bloggers and the crowd in Audio tonight is as varied as the many genres evident in Derek Miller and Alexis Krauss’s music.
They open with the first track on the album, 'Tell ‘Em', comprised of machine gun beats and distorted guitar riffs from Miller who likes his music very, very loud and it would be uncomfortably abrasive were it not for Alexis’ bubblegum vocals providing the sweet contrast to his dark matter. Initially the levels aren’t right and Alexis is almost inaudible but the sound engineer quickly corrects it and her melodic lyrics flow under the low ceiling and over our hands held high.
'Infinity Guitars', their first single to be officially released, is met with the audience members either singing along or head banging to the gritty guitar which Miller cranks up to 11 towards the end of the track to throw the throbbing dancefloor into wild thrashing. And it’s this which sums up Sleigh Bells’ signature sound – the raw unbridled rebelliousness of adolescence, shrill and unforgiving. The sample of Funkadelic’s 'Can You Get to That' introduces 'Rill Rill', which provides some harmonious respite from the unhinged onslaught of 'Noise Pop' and most of the girls in the audience join in with Alexis, who sounds like Katie White from The Ting Tings, if she bought a personality and it came with a free order of attitude.
Unfortunately Sleigh Bells’ set only lasts 30 minutes but this is to be expected as 'Treats' is only 30 minutes long. Their performance enraptures the crowd for its entirety and is all sorts of decibel breaking awesome, but it’s also very predictable, rarely veering off the tracklist of their album. What will be really interesting is where they go in 2011 and what new material they produce for their already adoring fanbase.
Audio, Saturday 20th November 2010
Words by Zac Colbert
Since the advent of the noughties with its MySpace, YouTube and viral marketing, meteoric rises to fame have become common place for many bands, but it’s safe to say even without these developments Sleigh Bells would still have become so popular so quickly. Their debut album 'Treats' has accrued positive reviews from harsh music critics as much as fan-boy bloggers and the crowd in Audio tonight is as varied as the many genres evident in Derek Miller and Alexis Krauss’s music.
They open with the first track on the album, 'Tell ‘Em', comprised of machine gun beats and distorted guitar riffs from Miller who likes his music very, very loud and it would be uncomfortably abrasive were it not for Alexis’ bubblegum vocals providing the sweet contrast to his dark matter. Initially the levels aren’t right and Alexis is almost inaudible but the sound engineer quickly corrects it and her melodic lyrics flow under the low ceiling and over our hands held high.
'Infinity Guitars', their first single to be officially released, is met with the audience members either singing along or head banging to the gritty guitar which Miller cranks up to 11 towards the end of the track to throw the throbbing dancefloor into wild thrashing. And it’s this which sums up Sleigh Bells’ signature sound – the raw unbridled rebelliousness of adolescence, shrill and unforgiving. The sample of Funkadelic’s 'Can You Get to That' introduces 'Rill Rill', which provides some harmonious respite from the unhinged onslaught of 'Noise Pop' and most of the girls in the audience join in with Alexis, who sounds like Katie White from The Ting Tings, if she bought a personality and it came with a free order of attitude.
Unfortunately Sleigh Bells’ set only lasts 30 minutes but this is to be expected as 'Treats' is only 30 minutes long. Their performance enraptures the crowd for its entirety and is all sorts of decibel breaking awesome, but it’s also very predictable, rarely veering off the tracklist of their album. What will be really interesting is where they go in 2011 and what new material they produce for their already adoring fanbase.
Audio, Saturday 20th November 2010
Words by Zac Colbert
Tuesday, 10 August 2010
YeaSayer @ Concorde2 - 12th July 2010
First published in the Brighton Source
Pop is evolving and thanks to a few vanguard New York artists, it’s for the better. The likes of Sleigh Bells, Jai Paul and tonight’s Yeasayer are rebranding popular music, moving it away from the highly polished aesthetics of Lady Gaga and the manufactured idols of X-Factor towards something honest, grassroots and often spectacular.
Tickets sold out a few days before this evening’s show and everyone has turned up to cram Concorde2’s main room. Yeasayer’s recent album Odd Blood has been met with critical acclaim and propelled them out of the blogosphere frying pan and into the mainstream fire.
Opener Wait for the Summer soon lulls everyone into a trance. The experimental blend of psychedelic folk pop drifts us down a neon river as frontman Chris Keating bounces around the stage with the buoyancy of a warm summer breeze. He’s dropped the woeful angst from his voice on their debut album All Hour Cymbals for a far more tuneful range that provides a new richness to the older tracks.
The crowd are engrossed by their ethereal performance, Concorde2’s stage is tented out in billowing silver sheets setting the scene in an igloo shaped spacecraft and so the majority are rendered physically unresponsive to the funky synth tracks like Rome but by the end of the set Mondegreen’s coxed everyone into grooving.
They tease us with an encore that was always coming as its Ambling Alp, a tune which is anything but ambling. It’s got the assurance that many tracks on their debut album lacked. The lyrics referring to Italian boxer Primo Carnera, “Stick up for yourself son, never mind what anyone else done” resonates the newfound confidence in their frontman and garners a sing-a-long from the gawping crowd.
We’ve all stood hypnotised without the band directly engaging with us, Chris Keating rarely spoke between tracks as they tended to bleed into each other. Yeasayer put on an absolutely captivating show but they did it at arms length.
Pop is evolving and thanks to a few vanguard New York artists, it’s for the better. The likes of Sleigh Bells, Jai Paul and tonight’s Yeasayer are rebranding popular music, moving it away from the highly polished aesthetics of Lady Gaga and the manufactured idols of X-Factor towards something honest, grassroots and often spectacular.
Tickets sold out a few days before this evening’s show and everyone has turned up to cram Concorde2’s main room. Yeasayer’s recent album Odd Blood has been met with critical acclaim and propelled them out of the blogosphere frying pan and into the mainstream fire.
Opener Wait for the Summer soon lulls everyone into a trance. The experimental blend of psychedelic folk pop drifts us down a neon river as frontman Chris Keating bounces around the stage with the buoyancy of a warm summer breeze. He’s dropped the woeful angst from his voice on their debut album All Hour Cymbals for a far more tuneful range that provides a new richness to the older tracks.
The crowd are engrossed by their ethereal performance, Concorde2’s stage is tented out in billowing silver sheets setting the scene in an igloo shaped spacecraft and so the majority are rendered physically unresponsive to the funky synth tracks like Rome but by the end of the set Mondegreen’s coxed everyone into grooving.
They tease us with an encore that was always coming as its Ambling Alp, a tune which is anything but ambling. It’s got the assurance that many tracks on their debut album lacked. The lyrics referring to Italian boxer Primo Carnera, “Stick up for yourself son, never mind what anyone else done” resonates the newfound confidence in their frontman and garners a sing-a-long from the gawping crowd.
We’ve all stood hypnotised without the band directly engaging with us, Chris Keating rarely spoke between tracks as they tended to bleed into each other. Yeasayer put on an absolutely captivating show but they did it at arms length.
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