Sleigh Bells Live

Saturday night, Kurt, me, Dan and Mikey went to see buzz band Sleigh Bells at Vinyl. I would love to say it was a great concert, but I will have to give it a Meh. Luckily, it was a cheap concert, with tickets only being $15, but based on the two extraordinarily crappy opening bands (who we had never heard of), we should have been given a refund of $10.

The first opening band was a sort of surf guitar/rockabilly due called Nerve City. About the kindest thing I can say about them was that their instruments were in tune and they could play them in a rudimentary way. They played for about 30 agonizing minutes and then thankfully got off the stage.

Here is a link to one of their songs, in case you were really interested in hearing what they sounded like.



They sound marginally better on record.

The second opening band I at least knew were on Diplo's label Mad Decent, so I expected something slightly more professional. Instead, what we got were two unbathed looking hipster doofuses, one on bass the other on drums, bashing out pointless after pointless song. I thought it was a joke. They sounded like they had each learned their instruments the week before. I went on the Internet afterwards and found some video where there were actually three guys playing, which sounded slightly better, but only slightly. So I am not sure if they are really a three piece, or if they are now a duo. Here is a live video from another concert with just the two of them. It is about as bad as the show we saw.



By this point in the evening we had about had it and were planning on giving up on Sleigh Bells. Luckily they were a lot more professional that the opening bands. It is just the duo of singer Alexis Krauss and guitarist-producer Derek Miller, with him on guitar and a bevy of clatteringly loud drum and keyboard programming as accompaniment.

A concert goer filmed the opening song "Tell 'Em" and posted it to Youtube.



Basically, the whole show was almost a note-perfect rendition of the cd with minimal lighting and effects, other than some strobe lights and smoke. It's not to say the show wasn't fun, it was just a bit predictable and unsurprising. The show also begged the question about where do they go from here. I can only hope they expand their sound, and at least get a live band for their tours. The show was pitifully short, barely 45 minutes. They played pretty much every song on the cd with no diversions or different mixes. I was really expecting something more.

With that said, it still does not detract from their brilliant debut cd Treats. It will still be in my top cds of the year. I just hope this is not their only good cd in them.