In 2005, The Go! Team struck it lucky with their debut album 'Thunder, Lightning, Strike' and got nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. The album was a frenzy: a kaleidascopic fit of energy that split off in directions too many to count and too hurried a fashion to dwell on. To me, that was a great rebuttal of the idea that an album should be coherent.
Turning to Sleigh Bells, I see them as The Go! Team's American counterparts. From Brooklyn, not Brighton, they are loud, messy and chop normal principles of genre into paste. They are Go! Team going over the boil, and their debut album 'Treats' has attracted critical acclaim in the UK, as much as in the US where the band have played Pitchfork Music Festival and Coachella. Check out Drowned in Sound, which gave it 9/10, and The Observer, no less. 'Crown on the Ground' is feverishly fuzzy, and sounds like high-pitched guitars feeding from one full-volume amp to another. Sleigh Bells' raw punk approach gives them the instability of band of the moment- Wavves- at times, but their pallet is rich in style and variation. My personal highlight 'Rill Rill' is radio friendly, most closely resembling Go! Team by its colour by numbers feel-good beat and vocal. Sleigh Bells ride roughshod with deer power (ha!) on 'Kids' and 'Infinity Guitars', but are funky throughout. Whether riotous quasi-metal, break beats or pop melodies, Sleigh Bells seem to replicate the youthful exuberance found on Go! Team's debut.
Sleigh Bells- Rill Rill
Sleigh Bells- Crown on the Ground
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