Sleigh Bells Rekindle the Old Magic at Chicago's Metro

Are you able to forget one of the seminal albums of your life?

It doesn't seem so when you first think about it. If you truly consider an album to be a big part of who you are or associated with your developmental years, it's going to be engrained into your memories one way or another right?

When I think about the albums that fall under that designation for me, my brain usually jumps first to the albums that introduced me to something new. Green Day's Dookie wasn't the first pop-punk album I ever heard, but after listening to songs like 'Burnout' and 'Longview', highlighting a life brimming with emotional confusion, chronic restlessness, and playing with yourself out of sheer boredom, it was the first time I thought "Wait, you can write songs about that? About having a shitty life?" It's not like I had a shitty life myself that had to be written about in the same way, but I didn't know people were putting out whole albums with songs about how there was nothing to do and everything was just kinda lame and boring.

Sleigh Bell's debut album Treats was like the flip side of the same coin. It was another album that immediately hit me with the same 'Wait, you can make music like this?" feeling, but for the opposite reasons Dookie spoke to me. Where Green Day surprised me by writing anthems dedicated to the empty minutiae of everyday life, Sleigh Bells were in danger of packing almost too much into each of their songs.

If you haven't heard a Sleigh Bells song before, take everything you like about a pop song. Now add some absolutely vicious heavy metal riffs over the top. Sprinkle in some horns and hip-hop beats, put the entire thing into a blender and crank the volume up as high as it will go. Now take whatever sound you're hearing in your head after I said all that, speed it up, and triple the volume.

Seriously. Check it out:

The first time I listened to that song, I thought I had the volume so high on my headphones that it was causing distortion. It was only once I had the same problem on my desk speakers that I realized, no that's just how the song sounds. Literally bursting at the seams with there amount of song inside these songs. I once heard Sleigh Bells songs as being 'all climax' and I think that's as accurate a description as you're gonna find.

And I was all in on it. I didn't have much exposure at all to the world of noise-rock prior to Treats and that kind of maximalist sound was exactly what I was looking for in that era of life. And as much as I liked their 2012 follow-up Reign of Terror, I'd hold their third record (2013's Bitter Rivals) right up there with their debut in quality and the amount of times I've played it over the last decade plus.

Or at least that's how things were for a while. Then I just sort of...stopped listening to them. Nothing against Sleigh Bells or any of their output - the three albums they put out from 2016-2021 were all very well made and fantastic Sleigh Bells records. But you know how in life as you grow older you can sometimes just drift away from a band for no specific reason? That's kinda what happened with me and Sleigh Bells. And that's all on me. I was the one missing out on the rad music they continued to produce.

But all that changed this year when the band came back with a new album (April's excellent Bunky Becky Birthday Boy) and accompanying tour. Like reconnecting with an old friend, I rediscovered my love for the band, now having a handful of additional albums worth of material to gorge on in preparation for the show. Taking the stage at Chicago's Metro for a whopping seventh time since their debut in 2010, Sleigh Bells had Sophie Hunter in support for an epic opportunity to rub in my face all the time I had missed out on with them in my life.

It's always a dicy proposition when dealing with someone that truly doesn't give a fuck. There are tons of people out there that say they don't give a fuck, but they actually do very much give a fuck. Sometimes several. But if someone truly doesn't give a fuck, that can lead to an absolute nightmare of a person to be around. But in the rare best case scenarios, it can lead to some truly fantastic 'in your fucking face' type of art.

This is where Sophie Hunter and her unique brand of pop/rap comes in. As she performs, you can just tell that her 'don't give a fuck' levels are off the charts. But listening to her rap about everything from self medication and mental dissatisfaction ('Mic Check') to the mysteries of the vagina ('CVNT'), it's clear that she's blunt and unapologetically herself in the way you can only pull of if you genuinely don't give a fuck. And onstage that translates to a hell of an atmosphere, which Hunter turns into enough of a party before you even get to the fact that she can absolutely spit bars.

If an actual Sleigh Bells studio album can border on sounding like it's too much, like the force of the sound is going to short out whatever you're using to listen, that also means that the perfect way to experience the band is in person. After all, in a setting where there's no such thing as too loud or too energetic, that's where the band really shines. And by that measure, Sleigh Bells did not disappoint. As if they were trying to prove that specifically, they kicked off their show ripping though 'Badly' and letting the capacity crowd know exactly what they were in for from the get go: The party is hotter than we could ever imagine.

And hotter it was. Just like how imagining Sleigh Bells' sound requires you to take whatever's in your head and multiply it by 10, every one of their songs translates into being way more powerful in person than on their albums. You can feel your teeth rattling with the double bass/crunchy riff combination on the never-more-aptly-titled 'Infinity Guitars'. The irresistible hooks on songs like 'Riot Rhythm' and 'Bunky Pop' dig their claws into your brain and ears that much more. And with songs like 'Wanna Start A Band?' that can whiplash in different guitar-and-keyboard directions at the drop of a hat, the sometimes-violent changes in musical direction are very much welcomed, especially as it helps with the headbanging that you'll already find yourself doing.

While accompanied on tour with a live drummer and backup vocalist/keyboardist, the band continues to be the Alexis Krauss/Derek Miller show. And while it might be lip service for most musical duos to say that they bring equal amounts to the table (we all adore Meg White as a drummer, but like...come on...), seeing Krauss and Miller onstage together proves that Sleigh Bells works so well because of exactly what both of them bring to compliment the other. Miller's heavy metal riffs (he used to be the guitarist for post-hardcore band Poison the Well) are the perfect compliment to Krauss' sugary sweet vocals. Krauss prefers to dance and jump around the stage while Miller fires off riff after riff with a series of full body lunges and kicks. Both will gravitate toward and away from each other for their entire 17 song set, like two massive musical planets that can't help but keep pulling each other into their respective orbits purely from the power of their rock.

More than anything, the songs work so well live because you can tell Miller and Krauss are having the time of their lives performing them. That kind of energy can't be faked, but also can't be denied and usually does exactly what it did to the Metro crowd that night, which is get them into the show in the form of ridiculous jumping/dancing with a huge side of headbanging. That's the benefit of playing songs that are each 'all climax': as long as you can bring the energy yourself, you can absolutely catch the audience up in your own hurricane of musical force for an hour and a half. By the time the band steamrolled through their final song of the night ('Crown on the Ground'), the exhausted audience didn't think twice about kicking things up yet another notch for the big finale (for those of you keeping track of the notches being kicked up, that's like twelve total notches. I told you it was wild.)

Sleigh Bells Setlist - The Metro 6.12.25

Badly
Infinity Guitars
Justine Go Genesis
Wanna Start a Band?
Riot Rhythm
Bunky Pop
Kids
Locust Laced
Comeback Kid
SWEET75
A/B Machines
I Can Only Stare
Bitter Rivals
This Summer
Rill Rill
Pulse Drips Quiet
Crown on the Ground