Beyond the P!nk?
Apr. 22nd, 2010 04:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbotMetal 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."
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."
Re: Glass Shards In the Mainframe
Date: 2010-04-22 10:37 pm (UTC)Re: Glass Shards In the Mainframe
Date: 2010-04-22 10:45 pm (UTC)