Manchester Scenewipe

Sleigh Bells, Tennis, Manchester Deaf Institute 21/1/11

Tuesday, January 25th, 2011, 9:00 am

By Chester Whelks

Ever Get The Feeling You’ve Been Cheated?

Sleigh Bells, Tennis, Manchester Deaf Institute 21/1/11

In the M.E.N.’s Sarah Walters’ preview of tonight’s ‘Sleigh Bells’ show at the Deaf Institute, the word ‘Punk’ is stapled to the anus of every other statement. When John Lydon asked the Winterland Ballroom “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” not only was he bringing the curtain down on The Sex Pistols’ career but renouncing Punk as a whole – expressing his disgust with his part in, what was for all intents and purposes: A Malcolm McClaren-managed boy band.

Conservatively coiffured, Camo-Jacketed axe-man and mastermind behind ‘Sleigh Bells’: Derek E. Miller, has true Punk pedigree having played with Post Hardcore band ‘Poison the Well’ for 6 years & 3 albums. Derek began his kampf of scouting for girl-singers while waiting tables. It was here he eventually came across Alexis Krauss, former child actress & member of failed teen girl-group with Benetton pretensions: ‘RubyBlue’, who was duly proffered (or pimped) by her drunk mother with whom she was dining at the time.

Tonight, ‘Sleigh Bells’ (or “SLAY FUCKING BELLS” as their T-Shirts describe them) have their intentions outlined by a wall of 4 rows of 2 Marshall amps, 1 atop the other, each coronated with its own red cyclopic-eyed cab. Cluttered in front of this is the modest gear of support band Tennis who quietly shamble onto the stage and regale us with their uncomplicated, 60s tinged, awash in Zoloft-pop. Looking like the coolest thing ever to ejaculate out of Nebraska, this Husband & wife duo seem for all the world to have started a band to spite everyone who presumably excluded them from everything their entire lives. Patrick Riley hunkers over his jangly Telecaster like he’s scared he might be too tall for the stage while the insistent bobbing of wife Alaina Moore’s Hammond keys and lilting vocals float atop a constant tide of Surf Rock beats. You wonder who conspired to let them get here, but you’re glad they did. Where to go for Tennis? Maybe nowhere, but its pretty blissful losing yourself in their ping pong-ing back and forth.

Tennis vacate the stage, and after a slight hiatus the sparkly billow of an intro from Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Everywhere’ shimmers like the Deaf Institute’s enormous mirrorball across the hooting & hollering “Sold Out” capacity, before being abruptly crushed by a sampled slab of metalcore.

Alexis Krauss stomps on from stage left yelling: “C’mon Manchester!” dressed in leggings and an oversized “99” numbered Football shirt, the name ‘BELLS’ between cut-off sleeve shoulders, rummaging a stud-knuckled fingerless glove into the seething mass of sycophants at the front of the stage. Derek plunges his Jackson’s fretboard forward with every thrust of a digitally manipulated powerchord, while Alexis emits a series of punctuating screams, sounding like a Guinea-Pig punchbag. The whole thing reeks like a shore leave whorehouse……or at least playing along to a backing track to mask any lapses. I’m willing to bet my testes on it. The audience is lapping-up RubyBlue number two’s stone washed Rock N’ Roll histrionics along with the drink she throws over them. Derek puts on a good show of seemingly channeling the volcanic rage of iconoclasm through his Thrash-master’s guitar of choice, but his amplifier-humping antics fail to coax a scintilla of feedback from the wall of Marshall stacks, until eventually a right-handed, 4-time air-punch betrays his ‘playing’ as the guitar carries on the riff without him.

After 35 minutes, ‘Sleigh Bells’ mercifully vacate the stage without so much as a “We love you Manchester, Goodnight!” in what they probably deem as being an act of Encore-scoffing non-compromise, but only serves to provide me with a chance to exhale a deep sigh of relief that I hadn’t paid to see that cap-gun karaoke. Punk’s not dead. Still feeling cheated.