Gig Flashback//Sleigh Bells

Sound City has a lot of bands you may have never heard of before and in that there is great potential and great risk. I pondered that thought as I made my way to the gig I'm about to review. 

Gig Flashback//Sleigh Bells at The Shipping Forecast

There is always a sense, at least, of anticipation of discovering the band who you'll maybe end up playing incessantly on your medium of choice for weeks and months to come when you go and that feeling may well have been placed very well for this gig, in which I saw Brooklyn, New York duo Sleigh Bells make a room full of peoples ears bleed like never before. Metaphorically of course!

Anyone coming to this gig expecting seasonal jingles would be highly disappointed. In fact, they'd be more off than any assumption ever should be! Described by various sources as a mix of Karen O and Kate Bush, singer of the duo Alison Klauss may have screamed - very literally at some points in the show!- and danced around madly like a Babushka era Kate Bush but in other aspects she is a mixture of the madness of early PJ Harvey, Karen O's rock style and a lot of nervous energy. 

If I had to attach a genre to this show, it's be Industrial Metal with a rock twist and even if the sheer noise made by just two people almost made it impossible to make out what was going on at times, like some Dalian nightmare, it was a fantastic, if brief show at just thirty minutes. For a first time experience, this was an excellent one that will be glued to my earlobes for at least another six years! It's brevity was it's genius in the end, and I'm not sure that anyone could've survived ninety minutes of Sleigh Bells Noise Rock without going insane in a very good way, which makes it a shame that the much shouted for encore never came.

We also shouldn't forget to mention that the other side of the duo, Derek E Miller, who dealt out the ear bleeds via sharp riffs and made the energy of this short set something to remember for weeks to come. It might have been difficult to make out much of what was going on vocally at times, but this was easily one of the more unique shows on a sound filled night in Liverpool.   

Review by Seba.