Audio By Carbonatix
Treats, the debut record by the Brooklyn boy-girl duo Sleigh Bells is one big sugar rush, a summertime explosion of electro pop that, by autumn, likely will reveal itself as just another guilty pleasure or, worse, just another indie band with more buzz than sting. The 11-song record is a fast-paced assault of Derek E. Miller’s crunchy metal riffs, conspicuous drum machine beats, and campy synth blasts. Singer Alexis Krauss’ candy-coated hip-hop and grrl punk chants (“Street wars, straight men / Cowboys, Indians / Red souls, red friends / Infinity guitars, go ‘head) are as absurdly catchy as they are silly. Sleigh Bells are less concerned with a message than they are how to deliver a message, and even with a short 32-minute running time, that game grows tiresome quickly. Miller and Krauss seem to be banking on your forgetting that just six years ago, the New York trio Le Tigre all but perfected the dance-punk formula on This Island. It’s aggravating that Sleigh Bells aren’t borrowing that formula so much as they are simply ripping it off.
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