Bitter Rivals

If you’ve long hoped for a more mainstream direction and always wanted to hear just how sweet a singer Krauss is, Bitter Rivals could be your favorite Sleigh Bells yet. But if you’re wishing they could’ve evolved in a way that didn’t involve quite so many ballads and especially not at the expense of what made Sleigh Bells so great, this might not be as essential as you presumed it would be.

It’s the rare number not bracketed by abrasively chintzy guitar noise meant to read as “rawk,” shudder-inducing synths, and jarring percussive machinery.

Sleigh Bells might have got a little softer on us, but they haven’t lost their charm.

Bitter Rivals could be explained as playing to Sleigh Bells’ strengths, but mostly it gets stuck in the weaker aspects of their previous albums, busying up the mercifully brief tracks with unnecessary filler, and definitively showing the dangers of nostalgia taken too far, with nu metal serving as a warning for pop punk, and freestyle, and whatever else might next resurface.

Krauss is on delicious vocal form throughout, sounding both as fierce and feminine as ever, matching cutting lyrics with sounds so girlish they almost risk being cutesy.

Ultimately, Bitter Rivals offers the comfort of familiarity while being different enough to avoid breeding contempt.

It's all still loud and lovely, but with a fresh dose of dynamism. [11 Oct 2013, p.72]

Sleigh Bells should be applauded for their attempts to move beyond their simplistic formula, but the growing pains are evident and awkward to listen to.

Throughout the album, you get the sense that Krauss is doing stuff she’s been waiting for years to try out, and that appears to have pushed Miller into fresh territory as well.

More often than not throughout the careening Bitter Rivals, there's clarity where there was disturbance, melody where there was once dissonance, and more nuanced vocal hooks and ditzy sonic flips than appeared on Sleigh Bells' first two records combined. [No. 104, p.51]

Ultimately, Bitter Rivals is a mish-mosh of songs: some good, some of high quality though tempered by and succumbing to poppiness, and some that shouldn’t have made the final cut.

Bitter Rivals is their toughest and most focused work yet. It’s also their poppiest, which is very much a good thing.

Creative movements make Bitter Rivals an exciting and powerful record, because it reminds the listener that sometimes it’s okay to follow an idea into unexpected territory and shake things up.

Bitter Rivals too often feels like a cheap thrill ride, firing on all cylinders but without any grand design.

Bitter Rivals probably isn’t going to top Treats on anyone’s list of favorite Sleigh Bells albums, but it at least shows that Miller and Krauss are interested in branching out sonically.

What the band still manages to do so well is use aural snippets from a range of contrasting but conventional sources, weave them together and still sound like no one else out there.

Breathlessly current in its maxed-out production, but also properly robust, Bitter Rivals should turn Sleigh Bells into serious contenders. [Dec 2013, p.104]

On their third album, the schoolyard chants are snarkier and the ooey-gooey melodies are sweeter.

While "24" might be the best song Sleigh Bells have penned to date.... The rest of the album doesn't fare so well, and like the proverbial Potemkin village, its bravado is illusory, its songs precarious, one-dimensional façades that sag under anything more than a passing listen.

While 2010 debut Treats was an exotic, overdubbed roar (Big Black-meets-the-Waitresses for people who give a shit about those references), and 2012's Reign of Terror winked through a heavy heart at Mutt Lange's scorched-earth sound field, Bitter Rivals is sly and sleek.

Sleigh Bells is simultaneously at its best (and for some, its most annoying) when it taps directly and forcefully into the very heightened emotions of high school.

For now it’s still deliciously entertaining.

It's the airier, less belligerent songs that prove most memorable.

Bitter Rivals' more diffuse nature seems to have prevented them from impressing their personality on their music in quite the same manner; it’s difficult to rate it as highly as a result, but this remains a solid effort.

This third album is faithful to the band’s idea, but toned down.