Sleigh Bells: Bitter Rivals
The 10 song album has been produced by guitarist, Derek Miller, mixed by Andrew Dawson (Kanye West) and written by Miller and singer Alexis Krauss. It finds the band showing their established and unique aesthetic as strongly as ever, whilst clearly continuing to create an ever more relevant and exciting form of pop music which draws from original rock ‘n’ roll rebellion as well as jacking beats from the most urban of our contemporary sonic surround.
As prolific and spontaneous as any band around (how many artists release three landmark albums in just over three years?) and as focused and direct as ever (the Bitter Rivals liner notes read, “Derek played everything. Alexis sang everything”), Sleigh Bells are about to release an album that is surely their best yet. Recorded intermittently at first while on the road touring Reign Of Terror, and then completed during a more intense three month period this year in New York, Bitter Rivals is the sound of a band continuing to evolve, opening up, and most of all, having a great time.
The album’s title track and first single, Bitter Rivals, is vintage Sleigh Bells, bearing the band’s signature sound. The hard crunch of Miller’s Jackson guitars juxtaposed against Alexis Krauss’s hooky pop vocals over electronic beats makes ‘Bitter Rivals’ instantly recognisable.
“This song is definitely representative of what you’re going to hear on the record in terms of setting a certain mood and combining a lot of the elements that we love to incorporate into our production,” Krauss said in an interview on SiriusXMU. “You have the gang vocals, the really vicious, brutal production, and the hooky, melodic element in the chorus.”
The video is now available to watch via the band’s Website bitterrivals.us. As yet another example of their distinctive vision it was directed by the band themselves and made in conjunction with The Creators Project.
