Go on tour, stay on tour
“The music business is terrible,” he says. “It’s full of crooks and bastards. You better watch your shit or someone will take everything from under you.”
Vocalist Alexis Krauss chimes in: “When you’ve been in this industry for a while you see an angle of it you don’t want to be part of. Unless you are working with the right people and have control over the right things, it can be a shitty business.”
If this makes them sounded jaded and cynical, nothing could be further from the case. In their moody photo-shoots the Brooklyn ‘noise pop’ duo come on like the hippest kids in class. With her MIA-style hoodies and vast RayBans, Krauss projects drop-dead cool; sulking beside her, Miller screams ‘difficult artist’. In conversation, though, they are sweet and unaffected. Krauss has a girl next door affability and seems completely lacking in pretension; Miller is plain spoken and self deprecating.
“At every point of this game, there is always someone telling you you’re fantastic — or that you won’t last,” says Miller, contemplating the hype that has enveloped the band since the release last summer of their first album Treats. “The goal is to stay focused on our songwriting. We make demos, put our record out, play shows. We try not to get caught in the buzz.”
Simultaneously abrasive and haunting, their music has attracted some influential admirers. Gobby Brit rapper MIA was an early cheerleader. Miller was still waiting tables at a Brazilian restaurant in Brooklyn when she caught one of their early singles on the web and invited him to produce a track on her album, Maya.
“I basically lost my job as a result,” he laughs. “She showed up in New York unannounced and wanted me to go into the studio and work with her. I called my boss and said, ‘I can’t come into work for a week.’ I was giving him, like 24 hours notice. He fired me on the spot. I didn’t care. I was going into the studio with one of my favourite MCs. It was fantastic — but also a little scary. I learned a lot.”
More recently they have won a powerful fan in the form of Beyoncé. Shortly before Christmas the internet was agog with rumours that, on the recommendation of influential DJ and producer Diplo, she flew Sleigh Bells to LA to produce and guest on her next album. However details of the collaboration are extremely sketchy as none of the relevant parties will comment. When the subject comes up, Sleigh Bells clam up.
“Whatever has been said, has been said,” Miller mumbles. “There’s not much more to add. It’s out of my hands really. That’s how it always is with a huge machine that big I suppose. It’s flattering. I love her records. Especially [2006’s] B-Day. I think it’s flat out incredible. She’s a world class, grade-A performer. Call her a diva, whatever you want. She is legit.”
Krauss and Miller are from radically different musical backgrounds. Raised in Florida, he spent his formative years in thrash metal groups, touring as far afield as Germany and Japan. Krauss, meanwhile, served time in a teenage girl band, for which she had to audition and in which she was expected to do little beyond thunk a bass and look pretty.
“We were like 16. We had a production deal with Sony. I got a lot of experience but it didn’t exactly push me in the direction I wanted to go. There were a lot of girl dance bands around. We played actual instruments so maybe we were out of kilter. Looking back, perhaps there was confusion over where we were supposed to fit in. We didn’t have much free will. There were people looking after the musical side and people looking after the business side.”
The duo became acquainted in the same restaurant from which Miller would later be fired. He was waiting on Krauss and her mother and struck up a conversation about what he was doing in New York. “It was a Brazilian restaurant in Williamsburg. I’d worked there for a year and a half. By chance, me and her mother got talking. I said I was in New York looking for a singer. She volunteered Alexis on the spot. We exchanged information and got together a week later and started recording. We liked what we were doing so we kept at it.”
What they do have in common is a tremendous work ethic. Though they played their first show less than two years ago, Sleigh Bells have clocked up a touring schedule that would put most bands to shame. From the start they’ve made the road their second home, logging thousands of miles as they wended their way across North America and Europe. Their appetite for live performance is insatiable.
“We’ve played London like nine times already,” laughs Miller. “The thing is, we never play the same room twice. Every time you go back to a city, the venue gets slightly larger. On our most recent time in London, the place had a capacity of a thousand. When we think back to where we performed in the UK for the first time, it’s remarkable we’ve come so far.”
Krauss, who taught fourth grade before Sleigh Bells, adds: “Other bands say, ‘how can you tour so much? You must be exhausted.’ We say, ‘look at us when we get on stage. Then you’ll get our answer.’ Being up there — it is just the best time. It makes everything else totally worthwhile.”
They’re a down to earth, likeable pair. And yet they do have some strange ideas. For instance, whilst Sleigh Bells are on the social networking site Twitter, Miller makes a point of deleting their entries after an hour or so. He likes to keep things mysterious, he says.
“There is a love-hate relationship there,” he says. “We use it. But then it’s gone. We don’t use it to promote our band. We just stick random remarks up there. There are artists I really like who are active on Twitter. And you know what? I usually end up liking their records a little less after I’ve gone and visited them there. So I’m ambivalent about the whole thing.”
* The new single Riot Rhythm is out now.
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