Sleigh Bells, the duo of Derek Miller and Alexis Krauss, has been at it for over two decades. The alt-pop supergroup has established themselves as boundary pushers, unafraid to present their otherworldly views on modern pop in an unapologetically grandiose fashion. Over the course of their twenty years together, a lot has changed. Pop music has seen a multitude of iterations, with one of the most booming commodities being this new wave of hyper-pop. The overproduced and aggressive subgenre takes no prisoners with its chaotic arrangements, building dense walls of distortion and infectious melodies. A genre like this can fall victim to relying on tropes from its forefathers, but if Krauss and Miller have proved anything since their 2010 debut, they are far from your average pop group.
On their seventh album together, Bunky Becky Birthday Boy, Sleigh Bells take a victory lap. The quick yet potent 11-song LP, set to be released this Friday (April 4), showcases the band’s ability to follow trends while stomping their footprints in the wet cement of the young hyper-pop genre. Krauss and Miller reach back to their metal roots to add another layer of hardcore production to hyper-pop, and while it is easy to place this LP into one genre, it does a great disservice to what the duo accomplished on their latest. The album jumps from nimble pop balladry to explosive, more punk-influenced anthems that hit you in the ear like a well-thrown brick. Sleigh Bells continues to innovate with some of their career’s most hardcore, nuanced pop music.
Bunky Becky Birthday Boy is a carefully crafted effort, but is the duo’s approach enough to separate them from their peers? The simple answer is yes, but only by a small margin. For every metal-infused moment, like “Life is Real,” there are songs that seem to safely lean on familiar tendencies, like the album’s opener “Bunky Pop.” While the tracklist is far from inconsistent, there are moments where the duo sounds less confident in their approach. A song like “Can I Scream” seems to have the band reaching for past sonic endeavors, deviating from the string of refreshing pop that makes the album so enticing. This is not to say these mood shifts are unwelcome; they’re just as electrifying and fun as the album’s highs. The lows aren’t enough to distract from the moments when Sleigh Bells breathe new life into their approach.
For the most part, Bunky Becky Birthday Boy is a successful experiment for Sleigh Bells. While the duo equally explores their ability to employ tropes, when they shatter those tropes, the album truly comes to life. “Badly” is the band’s unique take on pop-punk with hints of left-field production, while “Roxette Ric” is an intense, warping ballad. While Miller’s production is intricate and passionately crafted, the songwriting on Bunky Becky Birthday Boy shows a different side to the duo’s growth. “Wanna Start A Band” feels like a page from Sleigh Bells’ autobiography, and “Blasted Shadow” explores the strife with oneself caused by heartbreak, a vulnerable moment on a more jovial LP. While hidden under the surface of the colorful drum patterns and electronic melodies, Bunky Becky Birthday Boy is a welcomed change of pace for the established duo.
While the highs are scattered throughout the tracklist, the lows are not enough to remove the infectious fun from Sleigh Bells’s seventh studio album. Bunky Becky Birthday Boy is a messy yet awe-inspiring effort that showcases the duo is far from done evolving but still details some hesitancy from the band. The tracklist dips into moments where the band borrows from hyper-pop trends, but Bunky Becky Birthday Boy finds its voice when the duo emerges from these familiar territories. This tracklist welcomes a new era for Sleigh Bells while the band keeps one foot in their roots, creating a hectic tracklist that lands between infectiously fun and commercially viable. Either way you slice it, Sleigh Bells’s latest outing is fun-loving pop music that captures a change in the veteran musician’s craft and attitude towards the genre they call home.
