Domestic Disturbance In Stereo

Don't get me wrong, I'll always have a place in my heart for the local scene. I've had my fair share of run-ins with these meat-eating-but-vegan-loving, ironic mustache-wearing ruffians. It's been a real treat keeping Djarum in business and bringing back the cassette tape (You're next, LaserDisc). We've got Pitchfork practically eating out of our lap and I'd say there's a good chance we've already recorded the album you're writing/practicing with your band.

That being said, should you pull back the Ray-Bans, you'll realize that we're still capable of wrong in some extreme circumstances (namely the first two Grizzly Bear albums; but look, we fixed it). Innovation requires equal parts risk and sacrifice. So does a heavy night of drinking, which I'm also all too familiar with.
At current, we're squeezing out music like the morning after P.F. Chang's. The positives are we're raining down new music to the clueless consumer such as yourself, the drawback is the visual I just gave in the previous sentence and the fact that I followed it up with the phrase "we're raining down".

Believe me when I say that, aside from Amy Winehouse's liver and the Bieber nation, there isn't much I'm afraid of. I live my life pretty damn comfortably. I mean, I'm a bearshark, 2 of nature's most ferocious hunters in one body; personified killing efficiency. I'm sort of like the Steven Seagal of the animal kingdom, but without the blues album (sorry for this).
But there are things that do go bump in the night besides waking up from a Galifianakis-sized hangover. Namely, this new axe, Sleigh Bells.

Trust me when I say this is sheer terror with a synthesizer.

The album is so ferocious, you're going to feel you're being manhandled by Krauss and Miller as the third member of a brutal musical threesome (a new sort of Holy Trinity, if you will). Somewhere between the first minute of the first track and the final echo of the guitar, your entire manhood is going to be questioned harder than a date with Jamie Lee Curtis.
You'll feel chewed up, spit out, lightly assaulted, treated to a steak dinner, then left with the check.

Sleigh bells is that abusive partner you keep going back to that all of your friends are begging you to leave.
They just don't understand.
And how could they?

Though, truthfully, I'm finding it harder and harder to recommend this album because, as much as I'm totally adoring it, there's no getting around the fact that what Sleight Bells does best is go for the jugular. Their brutality is too much for any one man and I'd advise listening to this album with a group rather than alone. It's going to feel a lot like Krauss is your disapproving stepmother and you're the red-headed step child that just wants to go the ball. But this Cinderella story isn't one that ends well. Sleigh Bells doesn't let up. And maybe for that we should thank them.

It's not everyday we get to be abused so publicly by someone other than the government.