Album Review: Bunky Becky Birthday Boy by Sleigh Bells

your pop metal dream came true Few acts take half as much glee as Sleigh Bells in erasing the boundary between good and bad taste. How? Maybe their lurid take on pop maximalism goes a little hard on aesthetic carnage (jagged metal guitars x a fruit machine's worth of shiny synth tones x roof-raising holler x nifty industrial flourishes), maybe their shiteating grin takes indecent relish flashing a full set of rotten cavities, and maybe Alexis Krauss' is very happy for the weight of her vocals to rest on fractious subject matter (Even looking real bad, I feel good / When I'm feeling so sad, I feel good) -- but the bottom line is that the whole package benefits from such ruthlessly dialled-in songwriting and dispenses great hooks so freely that it's a sod's game to keep track of where tongue meets cheek or pathos gives way to quirk. Uh huh! Krauss and guitarist-producer Derek Miller have air-quotes gottit, and their latest record Bunky Becky Birthday Boy (fucking right) takes on their brief with an extra dose of sunshine.

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Sleigh Bells have never done subtlety. That much was obvious from the opening moments of their 2010 debut Treats, a lightning-in-a-bottle LP that established a unique sonic signature, one that paired bubblegum pop with gnarly riffs and hurled them through a blown-out speaker. What they did well in recent years, though, is refinement; some of their very best work has been done since 2016's Jessica Rabbit introduced synths and a darker, more brooding feel to the pair's music.

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In 2010, Sleigh Bells’ debut album Treats sliced clean through the neck of several tired and corny indie trends like a cartoon katana set ablaze, then wrote its sole demand in its victims’ blood: LOUDER. The LP remains singular 15 years after the fact, stuffed to the brim with crunchy, destroyed beats blown into the red; demonically catchy cheerleader vocals; and arguably some of the only genuinely iconic guitar riffs produced by millennials. Its lyrics are cool, menacing nonsense, seared into the brains of anyone who went to a good house party in the ten-odd years following its release.

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There's a joyfully nostalgic thread that runs through this sixth album from Sleigh Bells. It's there in its title, which nods to both vocalist Alexis Krauss' late dog Riz who would often be out on tour with the band ('Bunky Becky'), and her young son Wilder ('Birthday Boy'). It's dead centre of the blistering 'Wanna Start A Band', with its euphorically huge riffs and percussive clicks doing an excellent job at channelling the all-out aural assault that characterised their breakthrough and 2010 debut, 'Treats'.

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