Video of the Week: Sleigh Bells – Rill Rill

Although we’re getting into the darkest time of the year, I thought for this week’s video I’d bring out something light, summery and fun to wipe away those winter blues. So here’s the gorgeous video for Sleigh Bells’ Rill Rill, from their debut album Treats.

The video tells a dark story set with a smirk to a lush and sunny tune. What at first appears to be a pleasant drive turns into attempted murder, and the creepy shots of (singer) Alexis Krauss forming her sinister plans in an old high school are pure retro cool. Add to this the bleeding telephone, overflowing milkshake and the perfect muted colour palette, and you’ve got yourself a fun and artful video that really embodies everything that’s so great about Sleigh Bells.

Braids – Native Speaker

Guitar? Check. Drums, keys, bass? Check. Female vocalist with crazy voice who occasionally hurls out surprising obscenities? Check. So really, on paper Braids shape up to be exactly what everyone's doing right now, a fairly standard indie-rock group. But this album is both much much more than this and at the same time, curiously less.

What this album gets right, and more right than almost anything I've heard for a long time, are its sounds. Each individual track on this album is a vast, swirling soundscape of lush, natural samples and twinkling, spiralling synths that are completely enthralling at every turn. Opener Lemonade builds slow, from bird calls to a shimmering guitar line, from the guitar to a regular, driving beat, and then Raphaelle Standell-Preston's voice kicks in. By a third of the way in, she's wailing “Have you fucked all the stray kids yet?” Although her lyrics are odd, she has an incredibly strong voice, it really packs a punch. But at the same time, it reminds me of all those other female vocalists that people don't tend to like so much (your Joanna Newsoms and your Bjorks). Call it a marmite voice. I dig it. The track advances into a hook-laden, summery synth instrumental and then her voice comes back, almost spiralling around the track as she chants “All we want to do is love”; it's easy to get pleasantly entangled in the gorgeous layers in each of these tracks.

Put simply, the sounds in these tracks are beautiful. Plath Heart's intro sounds like someone literally breaking through a wall of sound, Glass Deers is a hazy ethereal soundscape and a perfect compliment to title track Native Speaker, with more downbeat textures and a tangible sense of longing. They even have range: Lammicken has a surprising dubby edge to it, this is sound lost and frantic in a vast landscape. It's a really important track as well, because without it (and its impressive mastery of a darker atmosphere) Braids could be accused of being too samey. Although even that accusation wouldn't be so bad, the first two tracks do showcase a real talent at exuberant, sparkling electro-pop.

Sounds good, right? Unfortunately, this album faces a few problems which rather pull the carpet out from under its own feet. It's not very well sequenced, the two poppiest tracks and the two longest tracks are both nextdoor neighbours, so after the first two you're wondering if its a bit light, and by the fourth it all feels like a bit of a slog. Which is a shame, because the album has all the ingredients of a really great one. Added to this, some of the tracks err on the slight side (Same Mum and Little Hand being the main culprits), and it's not quite long enough to have substanceless tracks.

Braids haven't quite pulled it off with this one, although there's a lot to like. I really can't stress enough how beautiful the soundscapes they've constructed are, the production is wonderful and displays a really sophisticated mastery of sonics and timing. It's worth one listen just for that. But the vocals will certainly be divisive, and most of the tracks feel very slightly off the mark; Glass Deers could be a bit shorter and Same Mum could use some variation. I'd say its worth a listen, and whether it strikes a chord is probably going to be mainly down to individual tastes.

7/10

Zola Jesus – Stridulum II

           (I know this isn't the cover but I like this picture better)

Zola Jesus is trying to do something interesting. In each of the tracks on this, more of an extension than a follow-up to her EP Stridulum, she mixes her chamber-goth instrumentals into a shoegaze-y wash that swells and flows beneath her soaring voice. It's goth for the hipsters, or pop for the goths. Whatever it is, her laudable ambition unfortunately is not quite carried off in this, her first LP.

The set-up is good, and opener Night is a stunner. The throbbing beat propels the dark, unsettling instrumental that builds beneath her vocals. And what vocals. The best thing about this artist by an enormous margin is her voice; it's astoundingly strong and emotive, carrying all the tracks to a certain level by its quality alone. Trust Me is another good cut, in which she doesn't go all out but takes a more subtle approach, the sound flows around her vocals and there is a quiet intimacy to the track not found anywhere else on the album.

As promising as this sounds, this album has some serious problems. Firstly, and from reading other reviews I'm surprised that no one has mentioned this, her vocals are completely cut off from the musical track. Perhaps the intention was to create an effect of her voice flying above the instrumentals, but I found in each track it sounded distant and separate from the music, which is incredibly jarring. However the biggest issue I had with the album is that after opener Night, all of the tracks sound tragically formulaic. Quiet and menacing strings, booming drumbeat, her voice starts quiet and slowly increases in volume in a manner so predictable you could probably chart it on a graph. If you listen to title track Stridulum it has remarkable strength on its own, but having heard the rest of the album I found absolutely nothing new to interest me.

Fortunately, the latter problem only really applies to the first 6 tracks which were those from her EP, and the 3 new tracks added go some way to remedying the issue. Sea Talk is sweeping and magisterial, and it is followed immediately by the fluttering piano of closer Lightsick which is a welcome change. I still find the vocals very detached from the instrumental track, but perhaps this will be sorted out in the mixing for the next release, or maybe it's just a weird problem only I have with the album. Either way, these 3 tracks are unfortunately too little to completely change the overall feel of the album.

As I've said, Zola Jesus has stunning ambition and a great voice. But on hearing the disparate elements that make up her sound, I can't help feeling that all of this could be done better, with more range and subtlety. So I wouldn't really recommend the album, but I'd say she's definitely one to watch, because with her next release she might just live up to all that promise.

5/10

Sleigh Bells – Treats

Sleigh Bells are Alexis Krauss and Derek Miller. She's from a manufactured girl group that didn't really make it, and he's from hardcore group Poison the Well. And by all accounts, Sleigh Bells sound exactly like this mix; they are loud, aggressive, and most of all, totally euphoric.

This album is what you'd get if you took a particularly good pop album, pumped up the volume to 1000 and cut out everything that wasn't a build-up, a drop, or a vocal hook. This is instant gratification music, they are firing on all cylinders almost all of the time and the majority is pure joy.

The album has definitely got substance and consistency, Miller's heavy synths sound like a sort of industrial pop and Krauss' vocals shimmer over the top of them with glossy hooks that never relent. The marriage of these styles could have easily gone wrong, but to pay these artists the credit they're due, they get it right more than could possibly be expected.

Opener Tell 'Em starts at full volume, with a deep hook on the bass that recurs through the whole song, punctuated by synthy ray-gun noises and the occasional release of a dubby throb. Glossy is definitely the best word for the vocals, the melody shines and sails right above the noise. This is simple pop pushed to extremes and distortion by the pummelling drum machines; the contrast between the two styles is never less than thrilling.

The album continues in much the same vein, Kids builds up to an incredibly satisfying release, and the fantastic Infinity Guitars pares the sound right down to distorted guitar, condensed finger clicks and Krauss' screaming vocals which all reach a crescendo of pure, incredible energy. You could see it as heavy noise pop or you could go all out on the analysis and talk about the distorting of modern pop by a vein of underground heaviness – something purely manufactured and consumer-fed ramped up to an extreme where the most surprising thing is that it is still incredibly catchy and musically interesting.

Another surprise is that when Sleigh Bells deviate slightly from the formula, they unerringly hit the mark. Crown On the Ground is by far the heaviest track on the album with a relentlessly pounding drumline introduced by searing guitars, but it's still great fun. Run the Heart has much heavier electro stylings and is pulled off magnificently, layers of synths building under Krauss' wordless hook (the kind that'll stay in your head for weeks) into a crunchy beat that retreats and re-introduces itself with perfect timing across the track. Perhaps the most surprising is potential album highlight 'Rill Rill' in which a bouncing noise and a finger click bursts into one of the most euphoric, summery pop tracks I've heard in a long while. The heaviness is completely stripped away and still it's utterly entrancing and substantial noise pop.

This album is a triumph, it's pop music pared down to its simplest hooks and built back up into something shiny, new, and endlessly satisfying.

84%