Verse the sixth … reveling in bittersweet sleigh bellery with the sugarcane brigade … vanguard, saúde, cheers — enjoi

“Sugarcane” — Sleigh Bells (Bitter Rivals, 2013)

Writers : Alexis Krauss, Derek Miller · · Producers : Miller

:: Primer ::

:: This one … so, sleigh bells ( prelimtroducing the band beyond / beneath the immediate tune, from a more broad perspective ) … i vaguely recall the dynamic duo radaring circa summer 2010 roundabout their debut album drop — quite literal collection of audiophilic treats — which, kitchen sink pristine maximalist indie pop ode and masterclass noise pop manifesto, within a capacity …

then, a few months later, circa early 2011, by way of the music blogorati ( never forget the pretentious necessity in / of said digital music discovery cabal niche ), diplo’s Tell ‘Em remix cemented the group’s groove in this pop cognitive gamut … understated gravity and just resonant intention with their aesthetic and collective identity … as an artistic pair … genuine creative partnership between craftspeople …

anyhaps, jump cut an extended stretch of months to … circa … 2012 (?) barcelona — another blessed and humbled by cosmic kairos happening — when a small miscellany of comrade crew and i stumbled upon sleigh bells’ primavera sound set ( which, que maravilla … claro ) … and then, again, fast forward a frame of years

circa … summer 2019 … connecting with a musician friend by way of audiobiography, and within said selection of his life’s soundtrack, none other than sleigh bells … Young Legends, to be more precise … which … i had never heard the track before, but / and ( again — research, yielding, resolutions ! ) having spun said tune for the sake of due journalistic diligence … was blown away, and time-warped right back into that particular niche of analogue pop space …

so, from the legendary tune in young referential, led a proper album spin and delve … and from bitter rivals immersion … a whole collective album courtship … just … wow … but, for another day … for just another as-yet-unidenitified future play … onward, so, bitter rivals, is another canon collective work of comprehensive conceptual materialized concrete in a way that just proper embodies the abstract … locomotive leitmotifs on parade … i knew i wanted to wax prosetic on something sleigh bells, at some point, for a minute now … likely, ideally, something bitter rivals … for the sake of sharing work that brought such joy in and of itself as just good considered creative musical expression with a soul with that esprit de corps …

after sifting through and riffing with the acerbic adversarial slate … Sugarcane surfaced as the rhyme to cellar in this particular temporal spatial … so it is, here we are, onward forward vanguard let’s march … ::

:: On the Palatte · Profile ::

:: on the front, this one deluges the palatte in pure torrential riff-click-boom distortion … the high tide havoc hits with a certain undercurrent of inherent harmonious, some sense of static tempo beneath the plume of sheer tempest … the bombast is beautiful in its bittersweet magnitude of suffocating soundwaves … it feels mount vesuvian … or fanboat-touring the everglades as titian skies rain ash and embers amidst hurrisugarcane season harvest, captain krauss navigating narration in a signature tone somewhere in the juxtapositional key of siren-dialect circe dictating voyages adjacent scylla and charybdis …

I couldn’t breathe so I had to move east
Sugarcane burns the same
When it touches the heat, when it touches the heat
Hurricane always came, and the season’s complete

the mid-palatte feels, florida … sunshine playplace of dystopian spectacular carnage by design … cocktail hour toasting four loko spiked daquiris chased with soco and lime … nu metal mattel on epcotphetamine serving sour patch pop rock … as we settle into the tune’s lush bedlam sonic bedrock, chord progressive modus operandi surface into genre anatomic functional formation … “dissonant noise and feedback … halfway point between bubblegum and avant-garde … combo of conventional pop songwriting with experimental sounds of white noise, distorted guitars and drones … hazy narcotic feel, as if melodies drift through swirling guitar textures … can also be bright and lively, or angular and challenging …” that chorus though, just wondrous … and from otherwise desolate apparent exile … krauss delivers roared whispers of panhandle prophecy and sugarcane sage

All the tempted that become so desperate to win
They only talk about redemption plans

it all feels so very what it is … scorched earth sugarcane fields … smoke billowed signaling amplified asthmatic catalyst jupiter push … the rise and fall and cyclical repeat of ricochet redemption … glitterbombs and grenadine … gator-baited monarchies … and then, emerald escapades oft too scene imperial wizardry … crystal balling cautionary tales of aristocrakings and bay brigade kennedys …

The grass might be greener but you can’t even stare
How did the king and the Kennedy fare?

Beware, beware …

how green the grass just beyond the pale of panhandled flash … on the finish, that kamikaze kick of a most divine wind … riding the rhythms of distorted acoustics … fade into the armory, lock load recoil and remix … battle cry chuckle, reel to close and scene … wandering, what is it all but a fever dream … another page in the rhyme of derek’s miller time odyssey ::

:: Pairings ::

:: So, this seven course sonic sampling pairs in the palatte scope of … generally speaking, john the baptist’s locust and wild honey dietribe … aural aesthetics in the sensory cadence of chaos and blessing …

· ·

Rhyme Cellar : Sugarcane : Pair’d Playlist :: · “Glory and Gore” – Lorde · · “Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime” – Nicola Roberts · · “Let Me Down” – Phantogram · · “Sugarcane” – Sleigh Bells · · “The Other Side Of Paradise” – Glass Animals · · “Keep Her Close” – ODESZA · · “Closer” – FKA twigs ·

· ·

so, rumbling out the starting gate with lorde’s Glory And Gore … i think 2021 was when i finally got around to granting pure heroine its proper first spin … Glory And Gore was an immediate standout, even then … very much, and quite literally, lyrically-speaking, gladiator coliseum pop … deeply rooted in the first-person pov … and the gold-dusted grit of that adolescent combatant delivery … felt aligned with the genesis of that bildungsroman battle of bitter rivalry …

next, ough, nicola, bless … nicola roberts’ Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime … from the sleeper eagle cinderella’s eyes … this one’s minimalist piano-backed balladry slow burn build into synthscendo new wave echo with those visceral vocals on necessity-in-evolutionary intention … just, whew … i can’t pinpoint exactly why i placed this tune on the immediate paring, but i think within a day or so of listing it on the prelim draft, this song made its way into a dreamscape underscore, so, in accord with universal inclination, so it remains and here we are … onward …

descending into phantogram’s ceremonious ode, Let Me Down … gravity-laden overtones caught in ebbing swells routed through a vignette-laced static rhythmic casket chrysalis undertow … in immediate retrospect, sleigh bells and phantogram feel complimentary … in subpop scene life … yin-yang, and/or the like … anyhaps, sidenote, ceremony, on the whole, vibes … but/and back to the immediate, LMD, if nothing else, segued with a smooth continuity into our signature centerpiece …

and / so then, of the course, said Sugarcane signaturepiece … onward …

ah, glass animals … so, this one, i vaguely recall wanting something how to be a human being, and originally considered Life Itself on mood and memory of affinity for the song itself, but, then, revisiting Sugarcane as the anchor, and htbahb from the pairing perspective, The Other Side Of Paradise, i mean … it’s right there … the narrative sequence is, right, there … so, still a beautiful sonic transit between these two tunes, and from the storyline scope, maybe something along the rhyme of …

when i was young my love booked a one way ticket, out west that’s where they make it, but i couldn’t breathe so i had to move east … the grass may be greener but baby blue, eye wish you could see the wicked truth, sugarcane burns the same when it touches the screaming sun you blow in to … how could i leave super paradise i held on to, hurricane always came and the season’s complete but i settle for a ghost i never knew … 

… and effectually, onward … winding down toward the wane and fade with a taste of odesza … just about everything on their my friends never die ep could’ve worked, theoretically, and, quite practically, but after a brief deliberation between the title track and chosen tune, went with, well, said chosen tune, Keep Her Close … i forget why exactly … i feel like the title track might have been too on-the-nose and not quite there for a penultimate track as it feels more finale … anyhaps, Keep Her Close is sumptuous with deep tones of somehow compass diaphanous, maintaining that sheer immersion of enveloping volume … which feels aligned in the arc of scenes … 

and for the last call, we conjure fka twigs’ Closer … this one … i just dove into a library delve and followed rip tide currents until frequencies felt familiar and figures illuminated in a focal frame … i don’t remember which albums, artists, etc. i swam through en route to the lp1 arrival, but i remember fka twigs emerging with a subtle but / and certain moirai … at some point in the process, like, once she hit the radar, the search party ceased and this was it and that was that … then the song itself, again, just … effectually, rationale in the realm of : Keep Her Closer … so … from a sensory vantage … that rhythmic cadence shifts into finespun rhapsody of frenetic infancy finding symphonic solace in bucolic maturation … a pair’d playlist retiring in the pacific pastures of proximal harmony … and scene ::

:: Impressions ::

:: First impression on this one was just … a chapter capture in the audio book of nemesis necessity bitter rivalry … the thing about this track, and the album as a whole, in particular, is its striking narrative imagery … somehow, amidst the amplified distortion and atmospheric discord, the narrative perspective conveys so clearly … and the sonic aesthetic itself, articulating pure zeitgeist, illustrates these songs in a way that translates metanarrative …

so, here, dialing it back down to Sugarcane in the immediate, the first impression was this snapshot resonance … a capture of the contemporaneous … a record in the cultural biography … but / and in the part, parcel, and process of researching said record ( as always, and, of the course, for the sake of due journalistic diligence ) the backstory is much simpler ( and yet, that much more significant, within a capacity ), it’s an autobiographical account from miller’s childhood …

so, the lasting impression evolved a bit more … the song feels like an instance of that pop music magic … the capacity to have a rebirth of the experience in the apparent death of the author … i don’t really know, can’t quite explain … but that a practical instance given rhyme, certain reason, and rhythm echoes the larger paradigm … well, i suppose in re-reading that observation, it seems quite mundane or cliche, but … nonetheless, i guess the lasting impression is just some score of abstract camaraderie … some sonic salve in redemptive revelry ::