“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” seems to be Sleigh Bells’ ethos when it comes to their new album, Bitter Rivals. Out today on Mom & Pop, the duo’s third full-length delivers yet another helping of the now-familiar formula of searing guitars and candy-coated vocals that made up their previous efforts–and that’s perfectly all right.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” seems to be Sleigh Bells’ ethos when it comes to their new album, Bitter Rivals. Out today on Mom & Pop, the duo’s third full-length delivers yet another helping of the now-familiar formula of searing guitars and candy-coated vocals that made up their previous efforts–and that’s perfectly all right.
Guitarist Derek Miller and vocalist Alexis Krauss first established their blend of bubblegum hooks and breakneck power chords with 2009’s Treats, and followed it up with a further distillation of their sound on last year’s Reign of Terror. Though Bitter Rivals plays around a bit with new instrumentation–synths, acoustic guitars–the move seems to be more a fleshing out of their sonic identity than an exploration of new directions.
For almost any other act, this sort of arrested development would suggest a creative stagnation, or (even worse) boring listening. For Sleigh Bells, though, the energy is at least half the show, and it’s present in spades on Bitter Rivals. Plus the duo is the quintessential “guilty pleasure” band–they hardly register on scales of innovation or technical prowess, but they excel when it comes to raw power and earworm melodies. And like any indulgence, the pleasure increases exponentially when the urge to indulge is itself indulged. Once you pop, and all that.
Album opener, lead single, and title track “Bitter Rivals,” seems to reinforce this sort of recursive ideology from the very start: the stilted acoustic strumming plays like a no wave reimagining of “Eye of the Tiger,” and the opening lines (“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”) recall a reference so old as be almost rote.
Whether or not this is lazy songwriting is completely beside the point: the important thing here is the creation of a sonic landscape so all-encompassing that it spans three albums and nearly half a decade, and is so approachable that stepping into it is like slipping into tepid bathwater. This album is familiar in the way that a sequel to a summer blockbuster is familiar: expansive and escapist, but so precisely manipulative that the audience’s emotional responses can be predicted from one minute to the next. The only words to describe it are “awesome” or “junk.”
If you’re in the market for a salty, crunchy popcorn bucket of an album, then Bitter Rivals is for you. You might feel sick if you eat the whole thing, but you’ll enjoy every minute while you’re doing it.
