Review Summary: Another album, another wrecking ball to pop music
Allow me to be indulgent, lend me your ears or eyes or what have you -
Sleigh bells is proto-hyperpop.
Maybe not in it's immediate sound, and also genres change over time - digicore has sort of done a fusion dance with the genre at some point, and acts like Jane Remover or Food House are arguably of some second (third?) wave of hyperpop by now. But this idea of breaking down pop music to its bare bones and dressing it up with odd, squeaky clean or wildly noisy production - PC Music, yes. Sleigh Bells...also, yes!
I'll make this as quick as I can. They toy with The Formula, and each successive album toys with it in a different way. Treats is pop music through a pressure cooker, cheerleader chants crushed to bits and spat out through a woodchipper. Reign of Terror does a full 180 and [throws] riffs on dream pop and shoegaze, often feeling like a confetti blasted dirge. Bitter Rivals is their odd duck out, a bright garish mess that takes pop music head on and explodes it from the inside out with ugly synth stabs and their most hip-hop influenced sound to date. Jessica Rabbit has a prog-punk ethos (a la zolo, Zappa) with everything they've done prior being torn apart and stitched back together out of order - tempos change and moods flicker on a single track while Alexis sneers, screams and shouts her way through their longest album to date (a whopping 43 minutes). If the first three records were exercises focusing on noise, ambience and hooks respectively (maybe that's an essay in itself), Jessica Rabbit is where they take all that and really start building outwards.
Texis ups the ante by doing a much better job of melding those garish synths with their big-drum big-riff sound, throwing them in with the most satisfying combination of all - blast-beats over clean female vocals. Texis is Jessica Rabbit with the fringe cut off, and it comes across as the most refreshed they've ever been. It's pop goodness placed next to headbanging aggression, following the Pixies' quiet->loud structure, with the caveat that the 'quiet' is the pop and the 'loud' is the metal.
One last quick aside - the lyrics to a sleigh bells song often don't make complete sense. They might be based on vibe or a mood, and that means you get an odd non-sequitur that only sounds like the line before it did. I'm reminded of GFOTY's The Argument or Adriano Celentano's Prisencolinensinainciusol, both sort of exercises in stringing together syllables to emulate something that might be coherent but is actually nonsense. The difference is there's meaning here.
"Bunky becky birthday girl bunky becky bet" - Sleigh Bells, 2025
And so we arrive at Bunky Becky Birthday Boy (let's call it "B4"). A lot of this record feels like Texis, but with the heaviness shifted in a different direction. Their sixth record is more oddball pop-metal that builds off of previous sounds. The biggest difference here is a much 'punkier' feeling. Badly is a spin on hair metal, Can I Scream almost feels like a take on Anamanaguchi (there's a very chiptune-y noise in the background of the verses). The most straightforward indie punk style offerings come in the form of Hi Someday and This Summer. All of these have blast beats or breakdowns or bright synth riffs interspersed throughout, just as Texis did.
Got a song in my heart, it's a bad one,
Got a song in my heart, it's a rad one.
Goes the micro-verse one minute into Roxette Ric. Repetition is a feature of any Sleigh Bells album, and B4 is no stranger. Opener Bunky Pop is basically a set of hooks repeated, calling to mind their original big hits off of Treats (Infinity Guitars, Rill Rill). Keep it simple for the cheerleaders, know the words to the song
halfway through the song. There's a head turner in the synth line that sets itself up nicely in the introduction, but then just changes chords in the middle of the verses. The lyrics - which appear as nonsense on a first glance - reveal themselves a lot more emotional when you learn it's dedicated to a recently passed dog (the bunky becky birthday girl in question). As an opener, it gave me faith in the rest of the record - and that faith was well founded.
If there's one thing repeated listens of this record made me realize, is that it's their most listenable record since Reign of Terror. That felt welcoming with it's familiar dream-pop turned heavy, feathers turned to steel but with Krauss' sharp feminine voice acting as an anchor. Here, the duo invoke some of those airier tendencies in the back half of the record. Alexis' voice echoes on 'Hi Someday', a lyrical call to escape stasis that is constantly building up to its raucous, cymbal-crashing punky peaks. Her voice echoes on Real Special Cool Thing too, and its form of release is those dreamy guitar chords that live in the verses, giving the tune a bit of lightness.
We're definitely supposed to be laughing with the band on Badly, a song that feels like dance-floor pop meets hair metal. The chorus is a giant glob of corn and cheese, but with the riffs bringing the energy it hardly matters. They successfully use the quiet -> loud formula here, with the verses being so barebones that it takes you back. It also throws you head-first into the chorus with no warning, taking you back once again! It's catchy, and if you're susceptible to their brand of pop you will have more than one hook stuck in your head. This Summer's pre-chorus with the
'kicking and thrashing, send us home packing' lines feels like the climax of the most unforgettable summer camp of your life, the most radical release of energy on the whole album.
Some people think they're missing something here but I couldn't tell you what it is. Sleigh Bells have never stayed the exact same, and the life context that informs this project reminds me of that. Between Alexis having a child and losing a cherished family dog months later, life always finds a way to stain its own beauty with a splatter of bull***. Slicing through the pop-metal here are feelings of unadulterated joy and forlorn pangs of nostalgia. It's never the focal point, but they're hiding in there, between the lyrics and the volume shifts. Their formula has been tweaked from the very beginning, inspired by so many sounds and life events that I don't think they'll ever make the same album twice. That's why I'm a listener. You should be too.
