Floridian Derek E. Miller and Alexis Krauss, a.k.a. Sleigh Bells may have just formed world’s first… hardcore girl pop band? Their story begins in late 2008 when Derek E. Miller–former guitar player for post-hardcore notables Poison the Well (FL!)–waited on Alexis and her mother (guess life is less hardcore after PtW). Derek was looking for a female vocalist for a new music project, and, as the story goes, Alexis’ mother volunteered her in what surely was an excruciatingly embarrassing moment. In her teen days, Alexis sang in a girl pop group of indeterminate quality… we doubt Derek was too picky, in that regard. Before long, Derek and Alexis were making music, and not too long after that, word of their live shows and first few singles were gaining viral momentum around the web. By the end of 2009, Sleigh Bells buzz was leaking to mainstream media outlets. With only a couple tracks recorded, Sleigh Bells managed to land at #57 in Pitchfork’s top 100 list of 2009 with “Crown on the Ground”
With all this hype before even releasing an EP, let alone an album, could Sleigh Bells meet expectations in 2010? With the release of Treats last month, we think that they have. In fact, Treats is currently boasting a remarkable 87 average review on Metacritic.com, very unusual for an album this edgy. The reviews seem a little inflated, perhaps for the hype, but we won’t deny the quixotic appeal.
Their music is very loud, abrupt, and noisy… an unlikely backdrop for the happygirl vocals of Alexis Krauss, who repeats whimsical little mini-hooks against a storm of distortion and machine fuzz.
As challenging as some of the tracks may be, we like this album because we can’t think of a genre-bender quite like it right now. Sleigh Bells managed to first fuse together two massive, adrenaline pumping styles–hardcore and crunk hip hop–but then took it a step further by sprinkling it with soft, feminine synth pop vocals. Occasionally the sonic shitstorm stalls long enough to hear Alexis chirp something about “your boyfriend”, immediately cut off when overdriven, heavily stacked chunks of “melody” resume the assault on your eardrums. The compression and overdriven distortion are usually so heavy that they nearly mute out the vocal tracks when the two coincide – this usually would constitute a production error, but this seems consistent with the spirit of Treats: Unrelenting, unpolished, provocative machine “pop”.
Treats may be too much for most listeners, but if you hear about them performing near you, GO. Sleigh Bells is a recipe for a fun live show if nothing else. They’re in Brooklyn now (who isn’t?), but with roots in the Sunshine State, Floridians should keep an eye on Sleigh Bells.
The Beauvilles are a Florida-based group that have been heating up stages across the country with their blues-rock-jam songcraft for nearly a decade. In fact, if you live in the Sunshine State, and haven’t somehow stumbled across the Beauvilles, you apparently have been quite content with hiding in the safety of your own home. Brasky caught up with Shawn Beauville, the once-and-for-all frontman of the group, and he offered some insights into the music biz, the religion of music, and why Florida holds a special appeal for their kickass brand of rock and roll.
Brasky: Recently we’ve decided it was due time to start covering some regional music, and our first thought was ‘Gotta get the Beauvilles in on this.’
Shawn Beauville: Rock and Roll.
Brasky: It certainly seems as if The Beauvilles have been busy lately, logging seven shows at SXSW alone. That seems to be the requisite way to get noticed these days: head to CMJ or SXSW, play until you bleed, get signed. How many separate gigs at an event like that do you think it takes to get people talking?
SB: We really were not playing that many shows in that amount of time intentionally, I think they set us up to do so many shows to keep us busy so we stay out of trouble. With any ‘industry’ music event the main allure is that you have a captive audience of industry, media, and general music lovers who made the trek there from all over the world. But both CMJ and SXSW are drastically different than their legends tell at this point. Both have become media frenzies, with music writers and the like trying to figure out what the labels are pushing, and occasionally stumbling upon a band that no one has ever heard of.
For us, we don’t really have any secret motives of becoming famous or anything, if we are invited and it seems like a wild time, we will travel cross country to be there, especially to Austin and NYC; both cities and the people there have been really kind to us in the last year. As far as getting people talking, I think one show alone can do that, I would rather have one true lover of the music that we convert at a warehouse party than a packed club of trendy people who would forget about you tomorrow. But I don’t really think much about this sort of thing, I am just a guitar player.
Brasky: Indeed. Your rock and roll sensibilities have been compared to the likes of Robert Plant and Jack White…what sets you apart from the ‘iconic’ version of a rock star?
SB: Iconic means different things to different people. There are certain musicians that I love and still listen to on vinyl when I am back home. T-Rex, David Bowie, Thin Lizzy, the Byrds, Eddie Cochran, Otis Redding, Nico & the Velvet Underground, and of course Led Zeppelin and may more from that era all represent a particular kind of music that was as uncompromising as it was authentic. I think now more than ever, people need that sort of music. But, I have no real perspective on what I am actually doing at this point or how we are viewed… If you are in the middle of a river and may drown, you stop thinking about how you look trying to keep above the water.
Brasky: According to your biography, you list music as your religion. Who do you think is the sitting pope of the church of music?
SB: That’s a really funny question. At this point, probably Willie Nelson. He seems to have the cleanest soul out of all of the legends left alive.
Brasky: You’ve been playing around the bay area for as long as anyone Brasky can think of (except maybe Mike Tozier)… What keeps you in Tampa?
SB: I grew up in suitcase city in northern Tampa, and in and around the historic district of Ybor, which until recently was a pretty damn dangerous place. I was lucky and didn’t wind up in jail or worse. At first I was a painter, and then a glassblower, and involved in some of the undergrounds arts collectives that started to spring up at the time. I had a few great loves that lived here. I left and went out west for a little while and wandered back, met some musicians that were set to tour, signed on, almost got a big record deal with them, didn’t, got offered to move to Austin and join an act on a major label that had a hit single, chose not to because their music was horrible… when I recorded my first EP in 2005 all the band lived here in Florida, we were living in a house that was recently demolished, and it was our recording studio, with vintage guitars and such piled everywhere, when we were invited to perform for the Grammy foundation because of it, we couldn’t believe it. There was a time around then that I thought about relocating, but right before I got to the point to pull the trigger, I would be offered some sort of opportunity, and I would be back on the road or back in a studio or back on an airplane. And yes, I still live here, I sleep here most of the time, but that doesn’t mean that it is limiting. And in reality the sort of music that I do, it wouldn’t help me to be in LosAngeles, I can’t remember the last time I heard a good band come out of LA.
Also, I like soul food. You can’t get soul food in Los Angeles or New York.
Brasky: Yeah, I seriously doubt Los Angeles can put greens on the table that would impress anyone from the South. One last question: You’ve already kicked off the festival season with an appearance at Harvest of Hope in St. Augustine… anything big on tap for the summer?
SB: We do have a summer tour that is getting worked on. How far out we are going to go, I am not sure… we have already been tapped for CMJ again in New York this coming October, and the PlaySTL festival in St.Louis for September, so we may be doing a southeastern tour for summer and then the East coast in September-October behind our upcoming record. I have been trying to get the agent to book us at only house parties for a tour, just to get our heads straight. We love playing these big stages, but it is more fun to be packed into a crowd. No separation between the audience and us. That’s rock and roll.
(This is a serious article. To see the gag plan filed with the University of Florida, click here)
So it finally happened, huh? You thought all those dorks running around playing Cops and Robbers: Zombie Edition were just wasting their time preparing for nothing. Well, it turned out that Zombies were real. Or, in an effort to be fair to any Zombies reading this page, “individuals suffering from ‘Zombie Behavior Spectrum Disorder’” were real. If you are living in the Sunshine state, and want to keep your tasty little brains in your skull where they belong, then you will heed this list of Survival tips, as suggested to Brasky by survivalist and redneck Patrick ‘Speedy’ Ross.
1. AVOID HOSPITALS. This is where the zombies will most likely begin their assault, and also may be lying in wait for an easy meal.
2. AVOID THE INTERSTATES. This is a no-brainer (lol). Being swamped in Florida traffic (ok ok) leaves you a sitting duck. If for some reason you want to leave the state, we have provided a map with highways in blood red and favorable back roads in cover-of-night black. PRINT THIS. It is a stroke of luck that you still have the internet with this whole Zombie thing going on.
3. ZOMBIES CAN’T SWIM, BUT NEITHER CAN YOU. Zombies may not be able to get to you in the ocean or a river, but you can’t stay there forever. And what about fucking Zombie Sharks? Speedy has a suggestion: “I took the screen offa backa my airboat so I can pop wheelies and shred the bastards.”
4. DISNEY IS A BAD IDEA. So is the Everglades. Zombie Pythons?
5. STOCK UP ON BEER. Speedy seems to think that a few cans of Busch Light will be worth two pairs of shoes and a case of shotgun shells after the apocalypse. Brasky agrees and adds Gin to the list.
6. EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT ZOMBIES IS WRONG. You are not a zombie expert and neither are we. Speedy: “I seen them movies got’s the Zombies pukin everywhere. That’s some horseshit.” Bottom line: Everything is going to be weird. Nobody will know what’s going on, and that’s not important. What’s important is not getting eaten.
7. HUMANS ARE NOT NECESSARILY YOUR FRIEND. Studies have shown that 68% of people will use a Zombie invasion as a license to kill whoever they want whenever they want. This is not a movie. It’s not even Apocalypse Now. It’s OH FUCK THERE’S GUTS FUCKING EVERYWHERE.
8. LITTLE TOWNS ARE A GOOD AND A BAD IDEA. Got this idea that some little town on the Suwannee River would make a great hideout til the whole thing just blows over? It probably will. But you’re probably not the first people to think of that plan. And maybe there’s a Zombie IN THE TRUNK OF YOUR CAR! You blew it for everyone.
Speedy was able to give us some final insights into how we can start to prepare for the coming wave of mindless murderers:
“Used t’work with a Haitian sumbitch said they tacked the corpses down with two foot a’rebar when they buried em to keep em from wakin up n’walkin. Sounds God damned genius to me, I told em. He wan’t that bright though, used to mow lawns with em and he couldn’t keep that weedeater off the screen porches. Shit behind someone’s hot tub n left the paper once too. Name’s Smiley.”
“If ya do have to engage em in combat fer God’s sake go fer the head. They cain’t see smell er hear ya afterwards. Ya oughta pick their pockets when yer done with em too.”
At left: Speedy’s cousin String Bean shows off his close range weaponry.
“Ya gotta learn to cook what ya can. They ain’t no ChickFilA after the Zombies eat everythang.”
“If’n ya see one them girls with lotsa tattoos kickin some real ass send her this way, son.”
At left: Speedy’s cousin String Bean shows off his close range weaponry.
