Wednesday 16 January 2013

"Why I fucking love Sleigh Bells" by Macaulay from Curxes

Today I am chuffed to announce that we have a couple of very special guest posts coming up on Session Bloggers over the next few days - Macaulay and Roberta from the band Curxes.
I mentioned Curxes a few posts ago when I was listening to the Blog Sound Of 2013 Longlist.  At the time I referred to them as 'a more frantic version of Siouxie and The Banshees' but they're definitely more than that and just sound better and better after each listen.  At the end of this post there's a You Tube clip of their excellent song 'Haunted Gold' which I highly recommend you listen to.
Anyway, enough of me rabbiting on, I'm just the support act here today. 
First up we have Macaulay who kicks off our "Why I fucking love..." series by talking about Sleigh Bells.  Roberta's post will follow soon.
Over to you, Macaulay...
They’re noisy, visceral and fun, and whilst not necessarily considered the most “deep” of bands, they tick all my modern musical boxes. This is why...
We all know there are a plethora of great artists from the past 50 years and like many people, these make up the majority of my listening. I imagine it’s the same for much of the music-loving public too; because how can brand new artists compete with the likes of The Beatles and David Bowie when those artists experienced such dizzying heights during their respective heydays, as well as having their legacies fawned over in proceeding years?
Sadly, it’s unlikely that any artist starting out now will reach such heights, so surely they must try harder to be as attention-grabbing as possible, right?  In my eyes, yes – and this is what Sleigh Bells have done.
The songs are short, spiky and don’t outstay their welcome. They combine nursery rhyme-simplicity with repetitive riffs in short, three-minute bursts. One listen is usually enough to make a song stick in your head. It’s an amalgamation of genres from the last 30 years and sounds like it is – a band having fun. Fusing 80s hair metal with sickly sweet vocals, modern R’n’B beats and then distorting it all to within an inch of its life sounds like a terrible idea, but their aptly-named debut “Treats” succeeded in making people take notice when it emerged back in 2010.
They are a marmite band and it is a bit juvenile, but it’s essentially boisterous party music you can crank up loud without shame and “lose your shit” to. For me, music is essentially entertainment and should therefore be fun. Sleigh Bells are awesome live, insanely cool and actively coined the term “bangover”. It’s what I get every morning after I’ve seen them play.
Thanks for the great post, Macaulay.  I agree, there's just something about Sleigh Bells. They're so unique and 'Comeback Kid' was definitely one of my favourite songs of last year.

If anyone else out there fancies writing a post for our "Why I fucking love..." series then please comment below or tweet me @sessionblogger

Before I leave though, as promised, I'm leaving you with this...




Thanks for stopping by.

Love

Simon S.
x

2 comments:

  1. yeeess! love sleigh bells!!

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    1. There's definitely a lot of love for Sleigh Bells on this blog at the moment. Thanks for commenting.

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