Sleigh Bells - New Times Broward-Palm Beach

8/3/2019 Sleigh Bells - New Times Broward-Palm Beach

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Patrick O'Dell

They won't need those coats here.

Details:

Sleigh Bells, with Liturgy. 8 p.m.

Saturday, February 11, at

Revolution Live, 100 SW Third

Ave., Fort Lauderdale. Tickets cost

$23. Call 954-449-1025.

Sleigh Bells' Paradise Lost Tour LeadsThem Back Home to FloridaBy Thomas Francispublished: February 09, 2012

Even after being christened by the music media elite

as an "it" band, the noise-pop duo Sleigh Bells has

yet to forsake its Florida roots.

It's true that singer Alexis Krauss and guitarist

Derek E. Miller got their big break not in the

Sunshine State but in Brooklyn. But Florida nativeMiller hasn't forgotten where he came from, and the

band is launching the first leg of a national tour with

a two-week jaunt through our often musically

neglected peninsula.

"I only moved to Brooklyn to find a singer," says

Miller, who famously met onetime Tampa resident

Krauss while he was a server at a Williamsburg

restaurant she visited with her mom. "I'm by no

means part of the scene here. I just live and work here," the guitarist said of the Big Apple.

When the time came to shoot the first video for the group's second album, Krauss and Miller

booked flights for Florida to film at the Jupiter home where Miller grew up, an apt location

for a song called "Comeback Kid."

"Alexis is jumping on my mom's bed," laughs Miller, of the opening scene. "She's wearing my

mom's robe and holding my rifle." The outside scenes were shot in the home's cul-de-sac,

with Miller goofing around on a skateboard that belongs to his nephew.

Portions of the video have a faded, gauzy look, as if they were recorded with a camcorder.The wardrobe also invokes a bygone era. Miller wears a Nirvana T-shirt and letterman's

jacket — very '90s — while Krauss' leather jacket and shredded jeans would be the envy of

any '80s punk-rock kid. They seem, in some ways, to look backward to move music forward.

Except for the screeching of Miller's guitar, it might have been a montage for Sixteen Candles

or Teen Wolf . "Yeah, I'm 30, and it's a common reference for people my age," Miller says. "I

http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/content/printVersion/1708



love Back to the Future, Goonies, and all those John Hughes films."

In the video's final scene, while walking through a grocery store, Miller does a fist pump, and

the frame freezes, just like it did for Judd Nelson at the end of The Breakfast Club. "I do fist

pumps often and unironically," Miller says. "I think it's badass, like, 'Fuck yeah!' "

He's had plenty of reason to fist-pump in the two years since the release of Treats, the

common denominator of so many rock critics' Best Albums of 2010 lists.

A regular member of the audience at Respectable Street in West Palm Beach during the

mid-aughts, Miller found himself taking stage as a headliner in July 2010. "I'm not going to

lie — that was very satisfying," he says, "because Florida's my home."

Miller made his first musical mark as a member of Poison the Well, a hardcore band with a

fiercely loyal constituency. Although he's stayed friends with his old bandmates, Miller

ventured out to forge a sound that was more accessible than hardcore and yet more

challenging than traditional pop music.

There's still a hardcore edge to Miller's deafening guitar riffs, but the pop sweetness of

Strauss' voice is what creates the contrast that has become Sleigh Bells' brand. There's a

subversive quality to her lyrics, because the instrumentals in pop music are hardly ever so

ferocious.

Not that Sleigh Bells are mocking pop — both Miller and Strauss have professed a love of Top

40 tunes from the 1980s and early '90s. The two credit those mass-marketed songs as

powerful influences. They wanted to hear how pop music sounded against a guitar and drum

machine turned up to the volume of a shuttle launch. Sleigh Bells resulted.

Last year, during the downtime between shows, Miller and Strauss began to craft what would become Sleigh Bells' second album, the ambitiously titled Reign of Terror. In December, a

trailer for the album appeared online, with Miller's trademark riffs and Strauss running a

brush through her ink-black hair, totally reminiscent of a villain from a sci-fi flick.

"I think this is a darker record, lyrically and thematically," says Miller, when asked to

compare the second album to the first. "I feel like my life has changed pretty dramatically

since before I recorded Treats, so it comes from a different place."

Reign of Terror will be released this year on February 21. The idea to promote the record

with a Florida tour came during a consultation with world-famous producer and DJ Diplo.He got his big break working with the flamboyant and noisy Sri Lanken M.I.A., whose

N.E.E.T. label signed Sleigh Bells in 2010.

"We were out one night drinking, just shooting the shit, and we jokingly talked about how we

should do a two-week tour of Florida, from Pensacola to the Keys, because we're both proud

Floridians," says Miller, referencing Diplo's time at the University of Central Florida. A few

weeks later, the "Paradise Lost" tour was announced. Though Diplo was originally on the bill




for the Fort Lauderdale show at Revolution, he's no longer performing that night. He will

rejoin the tour when it reaches Miami three nights later.

Sleigh Bells haven't played live since Bonnaroo last June, which came at the end of an

international tour to promote Treats. Miller is looking forward to seeing how the hometown

crowd responds to the band's new material. But mostly, he wants a Sleigh Bells show to be an

escape from the fans' daily routine.

"We want to help them feel good about themselves, get away from the computer and

Facebook... And maybe go home with someone," Miller jokes.

The Miami show is on Valentine's Day and would be the perfect way for a rock-snob couple

to mark the occasion. As for a first date? That would work only if Sleigh Bells were willing to

decrease the decibel level.

"No, you can't really do a lot of talking during our set," says Miller laughing. "But you can

always do that whole fake yawn move."

Indeed, the fake yawn is a classic. Wait, wasn't that in a John Hughes movie?


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Sleigh Bells - New Times Broward-Palm Beach