Treats, the debut album by Sleigh Bells, feels like a welcome assault on the ears. With so much gorgeous pop trickling out through the year, it feels as a welcome respite, strangely enough, that Sleigh Bells can come hot off their widely circulated demos and release one of the loudest and, yes, listenable, miasmas of the year. Whereas a good deal of the louder, distortion-laden albums this year have felt, to a certain degree, exclusive to the casual listener, Treats, with its screeching guitars and distorted noise-work, feels compelled to pull even the most lazy of listeners into its seemingly limitless expanse of sound. Not that this album is necessarily easy to listen to; it just invites everyone to try. If you like it fine, if not, then its okay with that too. Album highlights, such as opener "Tell 'Em" and the dense "Crown On The Ground," take the genre-bending talents of both Krauss and Miller and run their respective contributions through a tornadic set of amps, pedals and distortion techniques and surfaces with, not only something far more than the simple sum of their parts, but something wholly noteworthy and new, not to mention some of the loudest noise-rock of the year. And while this album does indeed feel like a single statement, devoid of the need of any sort of sequel, I'd be hard pressed not to be excited to hear where they go next.
Tracklisting:
01. Tell ‘Em
02. Kids
03. Riot Rhythm
04. Infinity Guitars
05. Run The Heart
06. Rachael
07. Rill Rill
08. Crown on the Ground (listen to the mp3 below)
09. Straight A’s
10. A/B Machines
11. Treats
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