Sleigh Bells, Rat Vs Possum,Purple Sneakers DJs @ PrinceBandroom, Melbourne(07/01/2011)

Mon 10th Jan, 2011 in Gig Reviews

As quick as the four kick drums that open their debut album, such has been the rise of Sleigh Bells. From a chance meeting in July 2008, from strength to strength, and with heaps of hype, they’ve stormed towards the international tour circuit, now finding their way to Australia. Longevity never was their strong suit, but the most interesting question is whether they will endure, or disappear into the jaws of the churning musical ecology of the day. For longevity of appeal, a fantastic live show has to pull that music through and make it constantly immediate. Did they do that, though?

Rat Vs Possum pretty much did, in their early support slot. It was a late series of changes to the lineup that brought them here; Chris Baio from Vampire Weekend originally had a DJ slot, and Seekae were to be coming down from Sydney for this express purpose. The former at least had a fairly mega blizzard to blame.
Given this change and the arguable decrease of lineup firepower, RvP did a wonderful job in charging the crowd and the Prince to start the night. Semi-frontwoman Daphne Shum bounced, colourful melodies soared; Pills lovely as ever.

The task was left to Purple Sneakers to DJ the night, playing a dance-lite set apparently to offset some possible impending speaker brutality from the headliners. This would be to their kind of hilarious embarrassment later on.

In no time, the smoke was pouring, the crowd was all screaming, and emerged Derek Miller with guitar thrust high in the air. Four Marshall stacks backed him, playing a short loop-pedal intro to foster some atmosphere for the arrival of the star of the Sleigh Bells live show, well-loved frontwoman Alexis Krauss. The crowd reacted impressively, and as they tore right through those four kicks and Tell ‘Em, everything was off to an intense start. The bass crunch (apparently coming from Miller’s iPod – kind of hard to believe given its quite colossal punch!) of course was delivered brutal & beautiful in a live setting.

Yet that was expected – definitely we knew those big beat assaults were coming. The songs were delivered with plenty of energy, Krauss swaying all about, winning the hearts of those in the front row, teeth bent to a scream now and often again. But immediacy in a gig surely has to come from the unexpected, from some creative way of working to surprise your audience. Nascent Sleigh Bells obviously had this going for them in spades, but now their sound is familiar, it’s a different game. Anger helps at times: Miller smashed his microphone with the neck of his guitar close to the finish, a moment of real excitement, and then all of a sudden the set had blitzed to a close.

Kids had been great, same too the wonderful Rill Rill, performed solo by Krauss, but then all was done and dusted, in 35 minutes or so. This also was mostly expected, but then followed a completely bizarre encore to close. Krauss came out to, sheepishly, apologise to the crowd for the brevity of their set: “How long is our album?” [Random front guy dude] “32 minutes!!!” “Yeah, so, that’s all we’ve got but we’ll be back next year with another album and a whole complete set of songs to play for you!” [Crowd] “woooo” “So, DJ, can we have something heavy? You got any Slayer?” [Pause] “Alright, I’m not gonna leave until we get some music. Any Slayer?” [Further pause. DJ wisely selects instead boppy bass-line dance tune. Alexis Krauss does best to dance] “Thanks guys” [End]

And that was all, and that was Sleigh Bells, and longevity never has been their strong suit. For an expensive ticket, there didn’t seem to be quite enough really killer payoff. Whether they’ll last the ages; after tonight, I’ m not so sure.