Do you want to throw your phone into a blender? Do you want to squeeze out five full seconds of your own attention without the heat of a blinking cursor, a twitching ad, an ambient anxiety underscoring every sentence? You can yearn for the apocalypse, or, maybe more pointedly, for the year 2010. Sleigh Bells are there with you, spiraling and scrolling. Consciousness might be a bit much right now, the band says. They’re grasping for a pause button.
Sleigh Bells got so much right. They mashed together frenetic beats and airy synths and hulking drums; they were loud and dense and frenetic, tightly controlled but impossible to predict. The more albums they made, the more they strayed from what worked. Bitter Rivals smashed through the soundboard, like the band had turned every dial up to its loudest setting and hoped the noise would be enough. Jessica Rabbit slipped between genres instead of breaking them apart, sometimes filtering the chaos into cookie-cutter electro-pop. Texis, the band’s 2021 release, could sound like diluted versions of early demos. It should be a relief that Bunky Becky Birthday Boy, their latest album, presents itself as something new. But the record doesn’t shape-shift as much as it leans into some of their most abrasive instincts.
Bunky Becky is a nickname for singer Alexis Krauss’ late dog, Riz. “We wanted the track to sound like a dog having the best moment of her life without any of the burden of self consciousness,” Derek Miller, the guitarist and producer of the group, wrote of the lead single in a press release—a cute concept that veers into Mickey Mouse Clubhouse territory as the duo chants “Bunky Becky Birthday Girl!” Sleigh Bells’ songs have rarely rewarded close attention to the lyrics—their best music is physical enough to distract from the occasional clunker—but these songs are tepid enough to leave you fixated on phrases like, “I tell you, ‘I love you’/’Cause you’re a cool one forever” and “The moment is real, the moment is magic.” The chief offender is “Life Was Real,” which applies the choppy Sleigh Bells dynamic to “Sk8er Boi”-style guitars. “Life was real and dark and crazy,” Krauss sings, before sneering, “Arrest me, sad face!”
The emoji might’ve worked with more weirdness surrounding it. Bunky Becky Birthday Boy is clean and crisp where it should spin out, bubbly where it should be brash. The inventiveness that animated Treats shows up only in a handful of moments in the back half: the 15 seconds of quasi-rap that make “Blasted Shadow” catchy instead of merely tolerable, or the first 30 seconds of “Badly,” which sound like 100 gecs—a band clearly indebted to Sleigh Bells, and currently outdoing Sleigh Bells at their own schtick. Even tracks that circle around a hazily imagined apocalypse—“This summer might be your last!”—can’t summon more than half a head bob. There’s enough energy pumping through these songs to move the 32-minute album along, but it feels like you’re slouching through the moving walkway at an airport.
“Hi Someday” is an exception. The song has a slick internal momentum—it revs, rather than just announcing that it’s revving. The machine-gun drum fills and blitz of twinkly synths serve a clear purpose, bludgeoning the listener with the weight of trudging through yet another day. The nebulous nihilism that Sleigh Bells toy around with for the rest of the album crystalizes here: “Every day is just like some day,” Krauss repeats, a banal koan that slices sharper each time, until the beat builds and she pleads, “Some day soon!” The track is a demand for a release, for relief; it’s also the closest Sleigh Bells comes to delivering it themselves.
