A decade ago, Derek Miller was playing guitar in a hardcore band while Alexis Krauss was singing in a teen-pop group, and they came together in Brooklyn in 2009 with the provocative idea that these two genres have more in common than conventional wisdom suggests. Sleigh Bells' spectacular 2010 debut album, Treats, was like Jock Jams for Hell's Angels; Miller's riffs went off like illegal bottle rockets, and Krauss lilted, roared, and chanted ("Did you do your best today?") with the cataclysmic cool of a cheerleader who's just hijacked a monster truck. Like all records that don’t quite sound like anything before, you either loved it or hated it, but you couldn’t ignore it.
Finding damaged beauty in distortion and compression, Treats sounded magnificently charred, like it had been recorded on the only console to survive Armageddon. After its success, Sleigh Bells got the opportunity to make the transition to hi-fi, and there was reason to worry that squeaky-clean production might extinguish what made them original in the first place. But their 2012 sophomore album Reign of Terror did "pulverizingly loud" in a different, though equally distinct way: It had the cavernous and slightly haunting atmosphere of a collection of songs recorded in an empty stadium. One of its best tracks was called "Crush"—a title that compacted all of Sleigh Bells' tensions and contradictions into a single syllable. "I got a crush on you," Krauss cooed, but in the very same breath she flashed a switchblade, "I gotta crush you now."
For their third album, Bitter Rivals, Sleigh Bells have made a few more tweaks to the formula. They've embraced more varied instrumentation—see: the lightning-strike synths on "Sing Like A Wire"; the menacingly strummed acoustic guitar that opens "Bitter Rivals"—and added a drummer to their live show. But most notably, they've become more creatively democratic. Miller handled the lyrics, music, and production on the previous records, but on Bitter Rivals Krauss wrote most of the melodies. The material she's composed for herself does allow her to show more range—Bitter Rivals features both Krauss's most tuneful and aggressive vocals yet, sometimes within the same song—but overall it is the work of a band enduring some growing pains. The good news is that Sleigh Bells have new ideas, but the often-undercooked Bitter Rivals shows they haven't yet found effective ways to execute many of them.
And it doesn't take long for this to become apparent. Opening track and lead-off single "Bitter Rivals" starts off with a misleadingly minimalist, showdown-at-high-noon vibe, but it soon becomes a cluttered and unrelenting mess of chunky power chords, high-voltage synthesizers, and near-Karmin-grade rapping—all heaped on top of each other with little rhyme or reason. The same goes for the puzzlingly stilted "Sing Like a Wire", which feels so disjointed it's like the verse, bridge, and chorus were dragged-and-dropped from three different songs. The hook hits like an earthquake, but there's no build; the drop appears so suddenly that it doesn't quite feel earned.
Compare these songs to the sleek, expertly controlled chaos of Treats, and you get the impression Krauss and Miller are still getting the hang of how to write effectively together. They've also lost a bit of the spark that once made their production so thrilling. Sleigh Bells usually have a knack for turning sounds just on the edge of punishing into something deeply, viscerally pleasurable (on the first couple listens Treats seemed like the sort of thing that might permanently damage your hearing), but Bitter Rivals contains a few of the only Sleigh Bells songs that can rightfully be dismissed as "grating." The worst offender here is the hellish chorus of "Minnie", which takes what are already Krauss's most uncomfortably piercing backing vocals and, cruelly, pitches them up. I'm pretty sure there are frequencies in this song that only dogs can hear.
The slower, less insistent songs on Bitter Rivals fare better. The R&B-inflected "Young Legends" showcases the album's strongest melody, but it's unfortunate that the song's hesitant and ill-fitting production (at least half of Krauss's vocals come through sputtered and muffled like walkie-talkie transmissions) holds it back from fully blooming. The mid-tempo "Tiger Kit" is a more effective display of restraint; its do-or-die urgency ("You're gonna jump from that cathedral/ In front of all of these people") is subtly kindled by synth hits that fire on cue but duck out before they overwhelm the arrangement. One of the album's brightest spots, though, is also its quietest: the airy ballad "To Hell With You" shows off Krauss's vocals with minimal effects, and its lyrics slyly toy with the expectations set by its brazen title. Like "Crush", it's partially a kiss-off, but the undertones are unexpectedly sweet: "I'll go to hell with you/ Here's the proof." It's a rare and welcome moment of pause on a record that often feels cramped, rushed, and cluttered. Much has been made of the fact that it was mixed by Andrew Dawson, who also worked on Yeezus, but what this record really could have used is a reducer.
In 2013, it’s no longer enough to simply be loud. To command attention in a world that's already blaring with distractions, interruptions, and no shortage of airhorns, a record needs to be loud in a creative, compelling, and previously unexplored way. Sleigh Bells have proven that they know this better than almost anybody making music right now, and that's why Bitter Rivals feels like an exceptionally unfortunate misstep. It isn't enough of a disaster to put a dent in their solid fanbase, but it doesn't have the spark of the stuff that built it up in the first place. Treats had the wildly aerodynamic dips of an elegantly constructed roller coaster—think of that rolling riff that careens through "A/B Machines", or the surprise ending of "Infinity Guitars" when a song that goes up to 11 reveals, only in the last 40 seconds, that it actually goes up to 12. Bitter Rivals too often feels like a cheap thrill ride, firing on all cylinders but without any grand design.
