Thursday, January 13, 2011

Sleigh Bells: Treats

There's a controversial song on The White Stripes' White Blood Cells album called "Aluminum," where Jack White uses the drums and guitar to replicate the sound of an aluminum processing plant. It's an abrasive, mechanical, repetitive, feedback-laden piece of avant-garde music that I admire, yet I leave off my iPod because I don't need it disrupting my day when I've got my playlist on random.

Treats is like an entire album of that song if the machine broke down, gained a sentience, repaired itself, and went on a killing spree. This is a hostile record. It is coming to get you. After my first listen, I just wanted the emergency personnel to drape a blanket over my shoulders, hand me a cup of cocoa, and tell me things were going to be okay. But they're not going to be okay, are they?

If this sounds like a wholly negative review, I assure you it's not. It's not a glowing endorsement, but I'm just trying to give you a good idea of where my head is at. The album begins with "Tell 'Em," a blitzkrieg of shotgun-blasting guitars and drums, sometimes working against each other to instill a deep sense of panic in the listener. At times, the album is downright Brechtian. The guitars range from merely loud to ear-rapingly noisy. The drums seem somehow wrong. Singer Alexis Krauss has an unearthly high voice, singing at the top of her register for a lot of the songs, clashing with the chaos below and only making the elements seem to fight harder against each other. "Rachel" begins with her panting heavily and ends with cooing while synths climb up to meet her. Frequently, she just grunts and I can't tell whether it's the kind of grunting done in the bedroom or at the gym.

Occasionally, it's tuneful, and I think the chaotic approach makes their "songier" songs that much more effective. "Rill Rill" is downright near-danceable and "Infinity Guitars" is rather awesome in its chanting, stomping, crunching, squealing glory. Other times, it just fucking hurts, like on "Crown on the Ground" which stabs you repeatedly then dances in your blood as it reaches it breathless climax.

The most effective part of the album is the way all the varying elements refuse to meld. The guitars and the drums and the voice -- and the occasional synth, production tricks and yes, so it seems, actual sleigh bells -- all stand distant and isolated so that they can work against one another to wrap their talons around the listener and pull him this way and that. It's a masterwork of disharmony. At its best it seems like an immensely rewarding work of experimentation. At its worst, it sounds like something an rather talented teenager might've accidentally cobbled together on Garage Band.

I don't sleep well on nights when I listen to "Treats." It's intimidating, relentless, and utterly irrational. This is not fun music. This is not a good time. This is panic distilled. The ominous final track offers the threat or promise that there are more "Treats" to come with its staggering riff and pulsing keyboards and utterly arrhythmic percussion. It may not be my ideal record, but it's extremely effective and affecting: it stirs something up in me, which all good music must, it's just that it puts this ability toward fearful rather than helpful ends. But that feeling alone is worthy of revisiting, and on my subsequent re-listens, I was more and more accustomed to the chaos. I got a bit more immunized and I started hearing songs where I'd previously only heard the noise. I'm just afraid now of what might happen if I delve too deep into the parts of the mind capable of creating such noise.

Just don't play it near your dog, and don't try to whistle it on the elevator.

Buy this album on iTunes now!

1 comment:

  1. I love this review. And, thanks to this, I've now purchased a new album that I like... a lot.

    ReplyDelete