Beyond the P!nk?

[koganbot]

Metal Mike Saunders on RubyBlue's Beyond Pink (and other stuff) in 2002.

Dave Moore on RubyBlue's Beyond Pink (and other stuff) in 2006.

Nitsuh Abebe on Sleigh Bells' "Crown On The Ground" in 2009 (also a paragraph from Marc Hogan in there)(don't know if it's Sleigh Bells, Sleighbells, or SleighBells, the Sleigh Bells MySpace being ambiguous on this crucial point). I quite like Nitsuh's metaphor of "face against the glass" for sound compressing-up-to-high-volume.

Mike Barthel on Sleigh Bells' gig last Tuesday at Neumo's, and also on some freedom-vs.-control zeitgeisty stuff

Jonathan Bogart on the joy of pop psychologizing zeitgeisty stuff (while reffing Sleigh Bells' "Crown On The Ground")

The connection between RubyBlue and Sleigh Bells is that Alexis Krauss, who'd been singer and bassist and frequent songwriter in RubyBlue, is the singer and - I assume - bass player in Sleigh Bells. I read and then forgot Metal Mike's write-up back in '02, then, four years later when Dave chimed in, I listened to the excellent "Through The Rain" which immediately got lost in the crowd of all the other '00s teenpop I was trying to digest in one massive gulp. So I'm a bit more au courant with Sleigh Bells, only being five months behind the times rather than four to eight years.

"Through The Rain" is right on the 2001-2002 K-T teenpop boundary between stylized neo-Go-Gos '80s new wave neo-'60s '00s Hanleyated teenybopper girl pop, on the one hand, and, on the other, the Shanks-Perry-Matrix-Magness Michelle-Pink-Avril-Lillix wall of wailing-vocal-and-loud-guitar teenrock confessional that's taking over, with - as Dave points out - Max'n'Luke'n'Kelly's leap into the water foreshadowed in this very song. So we're poised between fast clean riffing and the mud-rushing stream of everything. Couldn't find it streamed online, however. [EDIT: Ah, here's the stream, thanks to Dave.]

"Crown On The Ground" is potentially as good but iffier, though it could be a grower - jarring yet tuneful enough to be a leftfield hit like "Paper Planes," with a similar unison push to it; it lifts the riff from an excellent early '00s hip-hop classic whose name I'm pulling a blank on*, everything genuinely exciting when the bass hits, something of the force I got from a similar coming-together onslaught early on in Ke$ha's "Blah Blah Blah." But there's a clumsiness to the drumming which could sink the thing's top 40 chances, and I haven't decided if the high-pitched high-red static enriches the sound or gets in the way, selling out to bad indie concepts of integrity. Think it's both - an enrichment and an irritant, old news but not exhausted. The tom-tom clomp reminds me way too much of the Ting Tings. But the tunage is there, early '60s bright joy projected into space and coming back as radiation and static.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's something achieved live that hasn't made its way to tape yet.

Mike B. talks about the bass entering with great power at that live show. Same thing happens on record. I mean, on both records. "Through The Rain" starts with prettiness and rhythm guitar, then bass and harmony roll into us and we're swept away.

*EDIT: Tal linked me to Matthew Perpetua's Pitchfork review (incl. stream and free legal download), where Matthew suggests "Party Up" and "Get Me Bodied," and it's definitely "Party Up" that I was thinking of. Of course, Rob Sheffield says that "Party Up" sounds just like Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough."

Comments

Glass Shards In the Mainframe

[talrose.livejournal.com]

Hey Frank, I just nipped it in the bud and got an LJ account.

Haven't really connected with Sleigh Bells yet. Saw them live in Austin and thought they sounded a little washed out, though people tell me it's a lot better in a club. "Crown On the Ground" doesn't strike me as the immediate single; that would be "Infinity Guitars," which has a much leaner sound and a lot more strut. "Crown On the Ground" sounds too busy to my ears, and I'm not really into the Funkadelic sample on "Ring Ring" (and her voice sounds really out of place on Hazel's jingle-jangle, although that jarring quality might be part of its appeal, who knows).

In this Matthew Perpetua review (http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/11594-crown-on-the-ground/), he says that the song borrows from "Party Up" and "Get Me Bodied," though that sounds more like clutching for straws, just pulling at whatever Swizz Beatz early'00s production is out there. The opening riff sounds--that BEEW-NEEW-NEEW-NEEEEW--like the intro to "Hello Operator," the second song on The White Stripes' De Stijl, although I'm still trying to figure out where the riff you seem to talk about is coming from

Re: Glass Shards In the Mainframe

[koganbot]

The riff I'm thinking of probably is "Party Up." It's slowed down and not quite identical (maybe I beat chopped off at the end), but it's real close. Thanks. ("Riff" may be the wrong word, but that near clave-rhythmed vroom vroom vroom flourish.)

Re: Glass Shards In the Mainframe

[koganbot]

Maybe a beat chopped off at the end.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I was wrong -- twice (once in Stylus) -- about the proximity to Josie and the Pussycats, which was pretty much simultaneous, but I think the main points are still valid. Should re-examine that 2001-2003 period for Go-Gos, particularly since the sanctioned Disney Go-Go project finally saw light of day (and fizzled -- at any rate they'll want a less terrortastic name than KSM at this point) last year with, from what I could tell, only one or three good songs.

Do appreciate that there doesn't seem to be any post-teenpop career animosity a la Mandy Moore, though something about Sleigh Brlls feels like an overcompensation (for what?). The analog blow-out is a huge hurdle for me, not for blowing out but for being such an obnoxious underscoring of a point I feel like I'm missing.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I uploaded "Through the Rain" to Tumblr in November and you can stream it here.

[koganbot]

If I were advising Sleigh Bells I'd tell them to study "Blah Blah Blah" and the Electric Eels in order to insure that their noise moves and that it functions as more than just decoration and signifier (they would do well to study "Bring The Noise" and "She Watch Channel Zero," for that matter). The instinct that brings in that big bass and "Party Up" is good, but they've got to get their beats working. Maybe they should just hire Swizz Beatz. Or Benny Blanco. Following on that "Blah Blah Blah" bass recommendation, they ought to be listening to Cascada and Scooter for the bosh. Should probably steer clear of M.I.A. for the time being, come back to her later once they've got the rhythm worked out.

Haven't heard them live, but I don't think they've got the mastery and control that dickmalone perceives. Not if they can't get the rock 'n' roll to rock 'n' roll. But they've got a lot of promise, just don't know if they've got the brains to go for motion.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Very keen on Crown, though when I played it at Poptimism it got mostly boredom and some ow-my-ears and not very much oh-what's-this-then.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

Opting off the Jukebox thread so I don't end up in a flamewar with Lex, but in response to your comment there:

I don't know if "Tell 'Em" necessarily sets up the next song (although it is the album opener IIRC), but the album works as a whole, yeah. The way I interpret the album, "Kids" and "Rill Rill" are the nucleus, with the rest of the songs arranged in electron shells around that, some just making the schoolkid references ("Straight A's") and others portraits that you might not understand as being of a kid if you didn't have the rest of the album to guide you ("Run the Heart"), and the rest almost telling the full story but not as completely as "Kids" and "Rill Rill" do.

Interestingly, it seems the guy who isn't Alexis does all the songwriting. (Or 95%, he says in an interview, with him discarding ideas she doesn't like.)

[koganbot]

So she's his editor!

According to Allmusic, Alexis co-wrote five of the songs on RubyBlue's Beyond Pink, including "Through The Rain."

[koganbot]

I suppose I should listen to the first three Poison The Well albums too, though obv I'm going to get Treats first. (Poison The Well was the band that Derek Miller was in during the late '90s/early '00s.)