Don't Believe The Hype

The hype machine goes on and on.

I

magine a practically unknown New York female singer who once had pop star pretentions who has a re-branded indie image and appears on Saturday Night Live. Sounds like perfect fodder for a major indie twitter blog backlash right? I mean, the whole Lana Del Rey thing illustrated how simply everyone covering music is very concerned that all artists have the proper backgrounds and that they’re not peddling some faux indie pabulum, right?

So why are Sleigh Bells getting so much positive press, and so few harsh words?

Leaving behind whether they’re brilliantly inventive or just a stupid novelty act (they are), let’s take a peek at their backstory. The latest darlings of the Brooklyn hipster scene, Sleigh Bells are Derek E. Miller, who plays garage/metal guitar over pre-programmed beats, and Alexis Krauss, who sings in a nasal little-girl-trying-to-rock whine. They’re kind of like The White Stripes if The White Stripes had grown up listening to nothing but terrible Top 40 radio and Pantera.

Miller was in a Miami metal band called Poison The Well, who you never heard of because a) they were from Florida, b) they played speedmetal, and c) they were terrible.

Krauss, meanwhile, has about as much indie cred as Avril Lavigne. She was in a teen pop band called Rubyblue that aspired to be the new Bangles but ended up being the female Hanson.

So if Lana del Rey’s SNL appearance was a travesty, according to the hipster tastemakers and gossipmongers, why is no one crying foul about the Sleigh Bells appearance, which was equally out-of-nowhere, and, depending on your taste, even more deserving of a head scratch and a, “Wait, THIS is what everyone’s going on about?”

It couldn’t possibly be that music critics and the rest of the hipsteratti just blindly ape the opinions of whoever tweets first, can it? Surely popular taste isn’t simply a matter of craven conformity?

Nah, couldn’t be. Sleigh Bells must truly be cooler than they look, and their music is obviously much better than it sounds. It has to be. I read it on Pitchfork.