Hi everyone.
Thanks for coming to my (rarely updated) blog.
Below is a list of my top 50 free and legal downloads of 2010. As you’ll notice, all of them are from rcrdlbl.com. It’s a great site, so you should check it out. In the meantime, enjoy the music! There’s over 210 minutes of it here, so take your time. If you’re in a hurry, you should at least check out the top 10. If you’re feeling comment-y, feel free to say stuff here or on Facebook.
Have a great holiday!
P.S. I’m planning a follow-up list with the best downloads of late November and December of this year (I haven’t been able to keep up recently due to a seminar paper storm), so be on the lookout for that!
50. “Gigantic Tom Tom”—The Hundred In The Hands
49. “Bye Bye Bye”—School of Seven Bells
48. “When My Time Comes”—Dawes
47. “The Spirit Was Gone”—Antony & The Johnsons
46. “Deadly Medley (feat. Royce Da 5’9″ & Elzhi)”—Black Milk
45. “What Did My Lover Say? (It Always Had To Go This Way)”—Wolf Parade
44. “Let's Get Away”—POPO
43. “Dark Trance”—Free Energy
42. “Tip Toe Walk (Siriusmo Remix)”—Bodi Bill *explicit*
41. “King of Spain”—The Tallest Man On Earth
40. “Undercover Martyn (Softwar Remix)”—Two Door Cinema Club
39. “Dog Days Are Over (Breakage Remix)”—Florence and The Machine
38. “She Said (16Bit Remix)”—Plan B
37. “Radio (Wiley Edit)”—Alesha Dixon
36. “I Will Be Here (feat. Sneaky Sound System) (Wolfgang Gartner Remix)”—Tiesto
35. “Middle Name Period”—Egyptian Hip Hop
34. “When I'm Small”—Phantogram
33. “Grown Unknown”—Lia Ices
32. “King Of The Beach”—Wavves
31. “Home (RAC Mix)”—Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
30. “Eyesore”—Women
29. “Boy (RAC Mix)”—Ra Ra Riot
28. “Quicksand (Matty Moon Remix)”—Safari
27. “Everywhere I Go”—Lissie
26. “Shooting Stars”—Bag Raiders
25. “Helicopter (Diplo & Lunice Remix)”—Deerhunter
24. “Get Some”—Lykke Li
23. “For Ash”—Marnie Stern
22. “Georgia”—Cee-Lo
21. “MY KZ, YR BF (Memory Tapes Remix)”—Everything Everything
20. “Strawberry Girl”—The Cool Kids
19. “Paradise Circus (feat. Hope Sandoval) (Gui Boratto Remix)”—Massive Attack
18. “Yup (prod. Needlz)”—Donnis *explicit*
17. “Eyes Wide (Fool's Gold Remix)”—Local Natives *explicit*
16. “Wait Up (Boots Of Danger)”—Tokyo Police Club
15. “Heart To Tell”—The Love Language
14. “Hometown Hero (feat. Yelawolf) (Remix)”—BIG K.R.I.T. *explicit*
13. “Hide Me (Clock Opera Remix)”—The Golden Filter
12. “Hollywood (Fenech-Soler Remix)”—Marina And The Diamonds
11. “I Can't Wait”—Twin Shadow
10. “Continental Lover (Radio Edit)”—Ost & Kjex
9. “No Answers (feat. Jesse Boykins)”—Theophilus London
8. “Flames”—Karl X Johan
7. “Lies (Herve Remix)”—Fenech-Soler
6. “My Eyes To See”—Alcoholic Faith Mission
5. “Take It In”—Hot Chip
4. “National Anthem (F**k The World)”—Freddie Gibbs *explicit*
3. “Never Been”—Wiz Khalifa *explicit*
2. “O.N.E.”—Yeasayer
1. “Not In Love (feat. Robert Smith)”—Crystal Castles
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
The Besnard Lakes--'The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night'
You know what would make The Besnard Lakes a great band? If The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night had been their first album and The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse had been their follow-up. Are the Dark Horse is an album that snuck up on me. In fact, the first time I listened to it, I wrote it off as a bland postmodern homage to great rock n’ roll, a worthy effort to imitate the heroes from four-and-a-half decades’ worth of musical evolution, but an album that would remain in the shadows of the very sounds it seeks to send up. Then, perhaps because several critics couldn’t stop singing the album’s praises, I decided to listen to Are the Dark Horse again, this time on blast. The blare of my stereo helped me recognize the band’s ability on that album to craft an expansive and diverse sound over just eight tracks, a sound that was not mere homage to—or even worse, a pastiche of—rock n’ roll history (the most obvious players being The Beach Boys, Pink Floyd, and The Flaming Lips), but rather an otherworldly, radio/radio-interference soaked dialogue with the past and with the city.
And to put it simply, The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night is a disappointment by comparison. One adjective comes to mind when describing Are the Roaring Night: stagnant. You can even see it in the song titles, four of which act as parts one and two of a track with the same title. Where the first parts of these tracks (“Like the Ocean, Like the Innocent Pt. 1: The Ocean” and “Land of the Living Skies Pt. 1: The Land”) seem designed to establish instrumental setting for the lyrical exploration of their second parts (“The Innocent,” and “The Living Skies,” respectively [surprise, surprise]), they instead offer only a meaningless, meandering electronic buzz bleeding into round twos that seem even more aimless because the presence of the first parts leads you to expect something far more rewarding.
It’s not that, sonically, the album is uninspired or grating. The cyclone of sound The Besnard Lakes produce on Are the Roaring Night is a mass of strings and piano, fuzz, and rollicking synth sometimes mixed with cruel distortion, organ filling, or robotic beeping that blends smoothly with electric guitar chords and familiar drum patterns. But whereas the organically dynamic compositions on Are the Dark Horse highlight the diverse instrumentation the band offers at its best, those on Are the Roaring Night just boil and evaporate in a tiring cycle of repetition. The static songwriting on display here has the potential to be transcendent and exploratory (like it is on the album’s closing track, “The Lonely Moan”), but most of the time it just makes the listener impatient.
How can this be true of an album called The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night? The title invokes apocalypse, and the album’s fiery illustrations develop this further by suggesting oil- inflicted disaster (a la There Will Be Blood and—eerily—BP). But The Besnard Lakes’ mistake is to align the end of the world with both yawny atmospherics and a two-dimensional presentation of the natural world. The album imagines the sound of apocalypse as the everlasting end in itself, an eternal folding in, instead of allowing or envisioning the possibilities that might arise—for humans, for time and history, or even for nature—at its coming. Lyrically, the album does contain a great deal of mundane natural imagery (a departure from Are the Dark Horse and its urban settings) that undermines Are the Roaring Night’s surface invocation of capitalist greed. For instance, a title like “And This Is What We Call Progress” suggests a mockery of technological progress, a statement that “progress” comes only at the cost of manipulation and ultimately destruction. Yet the lyrics describe instead (and impressionistically) something far more nostalgic and vague, composed of sunlight and playful hideouts.
It’s not surprising, then, the early high points of the album, tracks three and four, “Chicago Train” and “Albatross,” explore natural settings, but remain rooted in the city while allowing for transition and desperation. These songs have within them a liveliness and humanity absent or at least obscured on the rest of the album. The whirring strings and longing falsetto of “Chicago Train” begin its titular journey, and the song’s more repetitive guitar-driven second half is merited by arrival, both at the flashing lights of the city and at the aloneness of adulthood, where Jace Lasek (one half of the husband-wife duo that makes up the band) or his speaker determines that “This is the last time I will follow.” “Albatross” also describes a journey, but one decidedly driven by relationship and its complementing growth and loss. Over whirring static-y guitars, a chorus of oohs, and eventually rolling drums and a brass section, Olga Goreas (the other half) describes experiences with a man who “showed me so much” but who now is gone. The song’s breathless ending finds her claiming that she screams for him: “There goes my man.” The sheer power of apocalypse is demonstrated here, along with its properties of both destruction (the end of the relationship) and creation (of memory and of a new and maniacal emotional state). It’s the strongest moment on the album, and yet the song that follows, “Glass Printer,” brings—with its droning guitar—the listener back to the blasé equilibrium that characterizes the rest of The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night.
This brings me back to my initial point. If Are the Roaring Night were The Besnard Lakes’ first album, “Chicago Train” and “Albatross” could be understood as a foretaste of great things to come. But we’ve already heard great things on Are the Dark Horse, and, unfortunately, “Chicago Train” and “Albatross” seem to function more as reminders of the band’s previous greatness than as signs of the band’s promise for albums to come.
And to put it simply, The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night is a disappointment by comparison. One adjective comes to mind when describing Are the Roaring Night: stagnant. You can even see it in the song titles, four of which act as parts one and two of a track with the same title. Where the first parts of these tracks (“Like the Ocean, Like the Innocent Pt. 1: The Ocean” and “Land of the Living Skies Pt. 1: The Land”) seem designed to establish instrumental setting for the lyrical exploration of their second parts (“The Innocent,” and “The Living Skies,” respectively [surprise, surprise]), they instead offer only a meaningless, meandering electronic buzz bleeding into round twos that seem even more aimless because the presence of the first parts leads you to expect something far more rewarding.
It’s not that, sonically, the album is uninspired or grating. The cyclone of sound The Besnard Lakes produce on Are the Roaring Night is a mass of strings and piano, fuzz, and rollicking synth sometimes mixed with cruel distortion, organ filling, or robotic beeping that blends smoothly with electric guitar chords and familiar drum patterns. But whereas the organically dynamic compositions on Are the Dark Horse highlight the diverse instrumentation the band offers at its best, those on Are the Roaring Night just boil and evaporate in a tiring cycle of repetition. The static songwriting on display here has the potential to be transcendent and exploratory (like it is on the album’s closing track, “The Lonely Moan”), but most of the time it just makes the listener impatient.
How can this be true of an album called The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night? The title invokes apocalypse, and the album’s fiery illustrations develop this further by suggesting oil- inflicted disaster (a la There Will Be Blood and—eerily—BP). But The Besnard Lakes’ mistake is to align the end of the world with both yawny atmospherics and a two-dimensional presentation of the natural world. The album imagines the sound of apocalypse as the everlasting end in itself, an eternal folding in, instead of allowing or envisioning the possibilities that might arise—for humans, for time and history, or even for nature—at its coming. Lyrically, the album does contain a great deal of mundane natural imagery (a departure from Are the Dark Horse and its urban settings) that undermines Are the Roaring Night’s surface invocation of capitalist greed. For instance, a title like “And This Is What We Call Progress” suggests a mockery of technological progress, a statement that “progress” comes only at the cost of manipulation and ultimately destruction. Yet the lyrics describe instead (and impressionistically) something far more nostalgic and vague, composed of sunlight and playful hideouts.
It’s not surprising, then, the early high points of the album, tracks three and four, “Chicago Train” and “Albatross,” explore natural settings, but remain rooted in the city while allowing for transition and desperation. These songs have within them a liveliness and humanity absent or at least obscured on the rest of the album. The whirring strings and longing falsetto of “Chicago Train” begin its titular journey, and the song’s more repetitive guitar-driven second half is merited by arrival, both at the flashing lights of the city and at the aloneness of adulthood, where Jace Lasek (one half of the husband-wife duo that makes up the band) or his speaker determines that “This is the last time I will follow.” “Albatross” also describes a journey, but one decidedly driven by relationship and its complementing growth and loss. Over whirring static-y guitars, a chorus of oohs, and eventually rolling drums and a brass section, Olga Goreas (the other half) describes experiences with a man who “showed me so much” but who now is gone. The song’s breathless ending finds her claiming that she screams for him: “There goes my man.” The sheer power of apocalypse is demonstrated here, along with its properties of both destruction (the end of the relationship) and creation (of memory and of a new and maniacal emotional state). It’s the strongest moment on the album, and yet the song that follows, “Glass Printer,” brings—with its droning guitar—the listener back to the blasé equilibrium that characterizes the rest of The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night.
This brings me back to my initial point. If Are the Roaring Night were The Besnard Lakes’ first album, “Chicago Train” and “Albatross” could be understood as a foretaste of great things to come. But we’ve already heard great things on Are the Dark Horse, and, unfortunately, “Chicago Train” and “Albatross” seem to function more as reminders of the band’s previous greatness than as signs of the band’s promise for albums to come.
Jay-Z--'The Blueprint 3'
It’s sometimes helpful to think of Jay-Z in terms of trilogies. You had his Volume trilogy in the late nineties, the triumvirate of Reasonable Doubt, Kingdom Come, and American Gangster, and now The Blueprint trilogy. (This, of course, leaves Streets Is Watching and Roc la Familia to hover on their own, as well as The Best of Both Worlds and Unfinished Business, and we can only hope that, if Jay decides to complete one of these, he works with the former, not the latter. Oh, and there’s The Black Album, which could really form its own trilogy, bookended by Biggie, with the two discs of The Blueprint 2, but that’s neither here nor there.) Anyways, what made Jay-Z’s Volume trilogy a success was its progression from weak-ass glamour rap to all-attitude, back-to-the-streets hood anthems. The Reasonable…Gangster trio of albums works because of its compelling exploration of identity, both individual and musical.
This leaves us with The Blueprint trilogy, which can’t operate the same way as either of the others. It’s impossible to argue that Jay-Z’s lyricism or thematic focus has improved as one could with the Volumes. Additionally, it’s not very revealing to see the different parts of The Blueprint in terms of identity, since none of these albums seem to center around one particular understanding of the self. But what does provide a helpful critical lens with The Blueprint trilogy is to view the three albums in terms of time. The Blueprint is very much an album of the present. Sure, the album heavily relies on the soul sample for its emotional heft, but Jay simply uses them as the mise-en-scene for an album ultimately concerned with the rappers currently taking shots at the throne, which, Jay argued on the album, was rightfully his. The Blueprint 2 deals with the past. Not only does that LP include songs with direct references to Biggie and Pac, he also brings in guest verses from Dr. Dre and Rakim, production from Heavy D, and song titles that either reference past albums (“The Watcher 2,” “The Blueprint 2,” “U Don’t Know (Remix)”) or reference the past in general (“I Did It My Way,” “A Ballad for the Fallen Soldier”). What remains then, for The Blueprint 3, is the future.
The Blueprint 3’s first five tracks get your hopes set high that Jay really is on his futuristic flow here. The album opens with the synth-topia of “What We Talkin’ About” and moves to the horn-driven “Thank You” before entering familiar (if you’ve been following the pre-release hype) territory with “D.O.A.” and “Run This Town.” “Thank You” (“This is your song, not mines”) effectively introduces the idea of individual listener-controlled hip-hop (the closest we might ever get to hip-hop science fiction, considering the MC’s egocentric nature); “D.O.A.” finds Jay fittingly demanding a transition from auto-tune to other forms of expression over a beat that undergoes transformation from “Takeover”-esque banging guitar to violin-sounding sax solo and back; and “Run This Town” brings Jay-Z’s demands to fruition by reintroducing recent glam-pop superstar Kanye West as rapper. The sequence ends with “Empire State of Mind,” which in the album’s most embracingly optimistic moment envisions New York’s future as a post-recession, reborn land of opportunity.
And then the album comes to a screeching halt. Even the tracks whose titles are meant to explicitly evoke the future (“On to the Next One,” “Off That,” “A Star is Born”) come off as drab and dreary. Jay loads up on future-of-hip-hop candidates Drake, J. Cole, and Kid Cudi, but then only really lets J. Cole have the proper space to display his talents (and it’s a shame that Cole, an immensely talented, thoughtful MC, comes off as just aiight here). Whereas Jay’s summary-of-how-great/rich/trendsetting-I-am rap is forgivable on “What We Talkin’ About” as gateway to the album as a whole, it gets frustrating as wallpaper for the entire middle section of the album. If the future is just “I’m a work of art, I’m a Warhol already” and “compare me to Biggie and Pac already,” then Jay should just stop rhyming already and let us look back at the oeuvre he’s already created.
Where Jay-Z does succeed in the album’s second half—and really on the album as a whole—is in those moments where he realizes the future as experiment and true collaboration. This occurs only where Jay allows room for the full-fledged creative efforts of Kanye West. The Blueprint 3 is a significant step forward in Jay’s musical relationship with Kanye, auto-tune bashing aside. Kanye West is listed as co-executive producer on the album and appears not only as a highlight on “Run This Town” but on the second-half’s standout “Hate.” At two-and-a-half minutes in length, “Hate” is the album’s shortest track, but it’s also one of the few times Jay has been willing to throw aside completely the verse and hook structure that suffocates him on so many of his other tracks. The beat here is sick with robotic voice, laser shots, fuzz, and unobtrusive tribal drums, unlike anything Jay has ever rapped over on one of his LPs. And it sounds not like a contest, but like he and Kanye are just having fun for a couple of minutes: “I can’t even stomach myself—ulcer,” Jay jokes, while Kanye intones, “I ain’t ever sprung, but I spring-her—Jerry” and even imitates the beat’s laser sounds at one point with a “pyoom, pyoom, pyoom.”
The album’s other strong second-half moment is the album’s affecting closing track, “Forever Young.” Kanye doesn’t have a verse here, but the beat is resolutely his own: with its lulling, full synths, nodding drum patterns, it’s like the post-coital response to “What We Talkin’ About.” Plus, Jay is noticeably human here, asserting his ability to stay young forever (“And it never ends / Because all we have to do is hit rewind”) while not entirely concealing his fear that he won’t be (“when the director yells cut,” “fear not much while we’re alive”). Jay’s final line on the album is “I’m painting you a portrait of Young,” which suggests he’s not a work of art already, but still in the process of creating it. Let’s hope that he does this by coloring outside the lines a bit or at least letting talented young(er) artists like Kanye make the coloring book.
This leaves us with The Blueprint trilogy, which can’t operate the same way as either of the others. It’s impossible to argue that Jay-Z’s lyricism or thematic focus has improved as one could with the Volumes. Additionally, it’s not very revealing to see the different parts of The Blueprint in terms of identity, since none of these albums seem to center around one particular understanding of the self. But what does provide a helpful critical lens with The Blueprint trilogy is to view the three albums in terms of time. The Blueprint is very much an album of the present. Sure, the album heavily relies on the soul sample for its emotional heft, but Jay simply uses them as the mise-en-scene for an album ultimately concerned with the rappers currently taking shots at the throne, which, Jay argued on the album, was rightfully his. The Blueprint 2 deals with the past. Not only does that LP include songs with direct references to Biggie and Pac, he also brings in guest verses from Dr. Dre and Rakim, production from Heavy D, and song titles that either reference past albums (“The Watcher 2,” “The Blueprint 2,” “U Don’t Know (Remix)”) or reference the past in general (“I Did It My Way,” “A Ballad for the Fallen Soldier”). What remains then, for The Blueprint 3, is the future.
The Blueprint 3’s first five tracks get your hopes set high that Jay really is on his futuristic flow here. The album opens with the synth-topia of “What We Talkin’ About” and moves to the horn-driven “Thank You” before entering familiar (if you’ve been following the pre-release hype) territory with “D.O.A.” and “Run This Town.” “Thank You” (“This is your song, not mines”) effectively introduces the idea of individual listener-controlled hip-hop (the closest we might ever get to hip-hop science fiction, considering the MC’s egocentric nature); “D.O.A.” finds Jay fittingly demanding a transition from auto-tune to other forms of expression over a beat that undergoes transformation from “Takeover”-esque banging guitar to violin-sounding sax solo and back; and “Run This Town” brings Jay-Z’s demands to fruition by reintroducing recent glam-pop superstar Kanye West as rapper. The sequence ends with “Empire State of Mind,” which in the album’s most embracingly optimistic moment envisions New York’s future as a post-recession, reborn land of opportunity.
And then the album comes to a screeching halt. Even the tracks whose titles are meant to explicitly evoke the future (“On to the Next One,” “Off That,” “A Star is Born”) come off as drab and dreary. Jay loads up on future-of-hip-hop candidates Drake, J. Cole, and Kid Cudi, but then only really lets J. Cole have the proper space to display his talents (and it’s a shame that Cole, an immensely talented, thoughtful MC, comes off as just aiight here). Whereas Jay’s summary-of-how-great/rich/trendsetting-I-am rap is forgivable on “What We Talkin’ About” as gateway to the album as a whole, it gets frustrating as wallpaper for the entire middle section of the album. If the future is just “I’m a work of art, I’m a Warhol already” and “compare me to Biggie and Pac already,” then Jay should just stop rhyming already and let us look back at the oeuvre he’s already created.
Where Jay-Z does succeed in the album’s second half—and really on the album as a whole—is in those moments where he realizes the future as experiment and true collaboration. This occurs only where Jay allows room for the full-fledged creative efforts of Kanye West. The Blueprint 3 is a significant step forward in Jay’s musical relationship with Kanye, auto-tune bashing aside. Kanye West is listed as co-executive producer on the album and appears not only as a highlight on “Run This Town” but on the second-half’s standout “Hate.” At two-and-a-half minutes in length, “Hate” is the album’s shortest track, but it’s also one of the few times Jay has been willing to throw aside completely the verse and hook structure that suffocates him on so many of his other tracks. The beat here is sick with robotic voice, laser shots, fuzz, and unobtrusive tribal drums, unlike anything Jay has ever rapped over on one of his LPs. And it sounds not like a contest, but like he and Kanye are just having fun for a couple of minutes: “I can’t even stomach myself—ulcer,” Jay jokes, while Kanye intones, “I ain’t ever sprung, but I spring-her—Jerry” and even imitates the beat’s laser sounds at one point with a “pyoom, pyoom, pyoom.”
The album’s other strong second-half moment is the album’s affecting closing track, “Forever Young.” Kanye doesn’t have a verse here, but the beat is resolutely his own: with its lulling, full synths, nodding drum patterns, it’s like the post-coital response to “What We Talkin’ About.” Plus, Jay is noticeably human here, asserting his ability to stay young forever (“And it never ends / Because all we have to do is hit rewind”) while not entirely concealing his fear that he won’t be (“when the director yells cut,” “fear not much while we’re alive”). Jay’s final line on the album is “I’m painting you a portrait of Young,” which suggests he’s not a work of art already, but still in the process of creating it. Let’s hope that he does this by coloring outside the lines a bit or at least letting talented young(er) artists like Kanye make the coloring book.
Sleigh Bells--'Treats'
I went to see Sleigh Bells, the duo made up of guitarist/producer Derek Miller and vocalist Alexis Krauss, perform on the night of my sister’s wedding. I took my sister with me. Okay, so my sister got married in the afternoon, and it was my other sister that I took to the show. Still, Sleigh Bells seems out of context in a discussion of weddings, or maybe just ultra-conservative (I mean this in the best possible way, and there was alcohol involved) weddings like my sister’s. Her wedding was an illustration of transcendent beauty and tried-and-true tradition, (re)union and restraint. Sleigh Bells, on the other hand is all excess and explosion, violence and vitality.
And this is how Treats, Sleigh Bells’ debut, plays out on first listen. In fact, it sounds like they’ve taken all the parts of rebel music your parents hated—the drum patterns and heavy bass of hip-hop, the electric guitar of heavy rock, the static of shitgaze (if your parents know what that is)—and created a coherent, danceable mass of energy. Try on “Crown on the Ground”—my own introduction to Sleigh Bells—for size: it begins with a rambunctious, ear-splitting guitar riff, drums pulled straight from the Neptunes’ repertoire, handclaps on top, before detonating into a huskier, more banging guitar riff over those incredible drums and the handclaps on top. All of the songs (with the exception of the acoustic, celebratory, chill-hoppy “Rill Rill” and the interlude-ish, electric freak-out of “Straight A’s”) unfold similarly, some synth-ier (“Run the Heart,” “Rachel”), some with more emphasis on the sadistic guitars (“Tell ‘Em”).
Let’s face it: Treats is straight-up wildin’ out music, especially when you take into account Alexis Krauss’ hypnotic, beckoning vocals. Yet is there more to it than this? Granted, “this” seems a significant musical success, a deft blending of genres resulting in something abrasive and inviting. (I certainly hope no one ever said the same of Limp Bizkit, and I shudder to think someone might have.)
The depth of Treats—and ultimately what rockets the album from passing crunk fad to something approaching greatness—resides in Sleigh Bells’ lyrics, which explore a space between religisexual ecstasy and high school drama. The high school drama aspect is the more obvious of the two, if only because the album art is plastered with pictures of cheerleaders (with their faces obliterated no less) and football fans. The lyrics are also obviously injected with a heavy dose of teenage angst: “Six sets, straight As, cut him in the bathroom,” Krauss intones on “Rill Rill,” while on “Run the Heart,” she threatens, “You take her heart, I can take out you.”
However, many of the album’s words aren’t words at all. Almost all of the songs on Treats simmer with “ahs,” heavy breathing, and other primeval sounds. And these aren’t Spencer Krug’s animal/barbarian/taunting explorations of genre and voice, either. Instead, they seem to acknowledge the sheer force and quasi-supernatural elements of the music it’s almost impossible to complement. Krauss’ sounds are the longings of body and spirit to coalesce with and become deity. “Crown on the Ground” (if you haven’t realized by now, the album’s most resonant track, even if everyone who has heard of Sleigh Bells knew this track before they heard Treats) then forms a kind of apotheosis for Sleigh Bells’ lyrical exploration on Treats. “Set-sets that crown on the ground” goes the refrain, and you can hear it as the stomping into the ground of the homecoming queen’s rhinestone tiara, the acknowledgment of a greater force at work than the human voice (even if this greater force is only that of the machines used to create the music), and the crowning of the ground itself, the manifestation of the greater force in the earthquake of bass and dancing.
So back to my sister’s wedding: Perhaps an album that unifies such an awesome variety of elements—chant, hip-hop, high school, lo-fi—isn’t so very far away from an event that brings together a hodge-podge of random people (and comes off smoothly). Additionally, maybe Treats taps into a kind of refined beauty, just one that only youth can fathom. Whatever. I’m happy for my married sister, but seeing Sleigh Bells live confirmed that they (and, by extension, Treats) throw a more exciting—and elemental—party.
And this is how Treats, Sleigh Bells’ debut, plays out on first listen. In fact, it sounds like they’ve taken all the parts of rebel music your parents hated—the drum patterns and heavy bass of hip-hop, the electric guitar of heavy rock, the static of shitgaze (if your parents know what that is)—and created a coherent, danceable mass of energy. Try on “Crown on the Ground”—my own introduction to Sleigh Bells—for size: it begins with a rambunctious, ear-splitting guitar riff, drums pulled straight from the Neptunes’ repertoire, handclaps on top, before detonating into a huskier, more banging guitar riff over those incredible drums and the handclaps on top. All of the songs (with the exception of the acoustic, celebratory, chill-hoppy “Rill Rill” and the interlude-ish, electric freak-out of “Straight A’s”) unfold similarly, some synth-ier (“Run the Heart,” “Rachel”), some with more emphasis on the sadistic guitars (“Tell ‘Em”).
Let’s face it: Treats is straight-up wildin’ out music, especially when you take into account Alexis Krauss’ hypnotic, beckoning vocals. Yet is there more to it than this? Granted, “this” seems a significant musical success, a deft blending of genres resulting in something abrasive and inviting. (I certainly hope no one ever said the same of Limp Bizkit, and I shudder to think someone might have.)
The depth of Treats—and ultimately what rockets the album from passing crunk fad to something approaching greatness—resides in Sleigh Bells’ lyrics, which explore a space between religisexual ecstasy and high school drama. The high school drama aspect is the more obvious of the two, if only because the album art is plastered with pictures of cheerleaders (with their faces obliterated no less) and football fans. The lyrics are also obviously injected with a heavy dose of teenage angst: “Six sets, straight As, cut him in the bathroom,” Krauss intones on “Rill Rill,” while on “Run the Heart,” she threatens, “You take her heart, I can take out you.”
However, many of the album’s words aren’t words at all. Almost all of the songs on Treats simmer with “ahs,” heavy breathing, and other primeval sounds. And these aren’t Spencer Krug’s animal/barbarian/taunting explorations of genre and voice, either. Instead, they seem to acknowledge the sheer force and quasi-supernatural elements of the music it’s almost impossible to complement. Krauss’ sounds are the longings of body and spirit to coalesce with and become deity. “Crown on the Ground” (if you haven’t realized by now, the album’s most resonant track, even if everyone who has heard of Sleigh Bells knew this track before they heard Treats) then forms a kind of apotheosis for Sleigh Bells’ lyrical exploration on Treats. “Set-sets that crown on the ground” goes the refrain, and you can hear it as the stomping into the ground of the homecoming queen’s rhinestone tiara, the acknowledgment of a greater force at work than the human voice (even if this greater force is only that of the machines used to create the music), and the crowning of the ground itself, the manifestation of the greater force in the earthquake of bass and dancing.
So back to my sister’s wedding: Perhaps an album that unifies such an awesome variety of elements—chant, hip-hop, high school, lo-fi—isn’t so very far away from an event that brings together a hodge-podge of random people (and comes off smoothly). Additionally, maybe Treats taps into a kind of refined beauty, just one that only youth can fathom. Whatever. I’m happy for my married sister, but seeing Sleigh Bells live confirmed that they (and, by extension, Treats) throw a more exciting—and elemental—party.
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