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I still don’t like Sleigh Bells

I

Kriston wants me to believe that Sleigh Bells is good. To wit, he shares this video:

So! They’ve dropped the irritating audio clipping, which I found physically unpleasant. But this is just as gimmicky. Have a look at the waveform:

sleigh bells waveform

The Sleigh Bells audio has been compressed to hell and back. By way of comparison, here’s the waveform captured from a Youtube of Back In Black, which we can hopefully agree is a not particularly sedate song (in order to be more than fair, I’ve tried to crop this to include both more time, and portions of the song that extend beyond the admittedly stuttery intro):

Back in Black

Overcompression is standard operating procedure for recorded music these days. But it’s also a cheap trick that makes things seem louder. That’s fine for grabbing attention, but in the case of Sleigh Bells it’s the second time they’ve made a play at the same gimmick — and this is a far less daring move than the audacious/unpleasant clipping of the last LP.

I think the way to understand this is by way of analogy to food. There are certain reliable levers that chefs can lean on to stimulate our pathetic simian brains. More salt/more fat/more sweetness/more umami. Any of these will endow food with a greater valence. That’s not a good or a bad thing, necessarily; it can be deployed artfully by skilled gastronomists, or it can be hammered home via a bag of Sweet Chili Doritos that’s been crammed full of sodium, MSG and corn syrup solids.

Loudness is just the same. The louder it is, the more fervent it is; the more raucous the party, the more urgent the emotion, the more outrageous the rebellion. And Sleigh Bells is indisputably making their name by being the loudest bad around.

So I leave it to you: is Sleigh Bells a Ferran Adrià, or are they a Frito Lay? Tedious pop historians will adjudicate this, but based on the simplistic lyrics, repetitive hooks and increasingly well-worn playbook, I know where I’m placing my bet.

About the author

Tom Lee

5 comments

  • You probably already know this, but everything mastered or remastered after about 2003 sounds like that.

  • This is true; I’m cheating a little bit with the comparison. But my basic argument remains: that Sleigh Bells has made their name through production tricks that all have to do with conveying loudness (which is not to be confused with volume–but I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that).

    (Nothing against the producer’s art, incidentally! I have a lot of respect for the Rubins and Lillywhites of the world. But what SB is going strikes me as a fairly cheap gimmick.)

  • I guess I don’t know the difference between volume and loudness, i’ll read up on that

By Tom Lee