Sleigh Bells’ Party on the Edge

Bunky Becky Birthday Boy marks Sleigh Bells’ return after a four-year gap, delivering a loud, energetic blend of pop-punk and pop-metal influences. The album stays true to the duo’s signature sound — bold, bright, and unapologetically noisy — while introducing a more polished and emotionally nuanced approach. With driving choruses, distorted guitars, and a playful attitude, the record explores themes of chaos, celebration, and emotional intensity.

Clocking in at just over half an hour across 11 tracks, the album feels like fragments of overheard conversations at a wild party. From the opening track, Bunky Pop, a whirlwind atmosphere of unrestrained celebration takes hold — a kind of carnival euphoria that escalates to the brink of panic. This manic tension is reflected both in the lyrics — “Can’t sit still, can’t go in reverse // Here comes the fear, here comes the chorus” — and in the song’s increasingly dark sonic undertones. The idea of madness as both freedom and disintegration threads through the album.

Playfulness and reckless fun form its core. The lyrical characters live at full volume — and it’s precisely this tension between euphoria and self-loss that ties the record together, giving it an aesthetic of joy teetering on collapse. “This summer might be your last,” the band sings, highlighting the urgency of living fully in the now.

Nowhere is this more vividly expressed than in Can I Scream. Over a bouncing, cheerful rhythm, the band sings about a near-total emotional breakdown — and still finds strength in it, even beauty: “You can glow // When you're gutted like a buffalo.” In later tracks, this rawness isn’t dismissed or sanitized — it’s met with acceptance and even love: “I only fall in love with the flaws // Things that you're ashamed of.”

Still, by the end of the album, the track Hi Someday introduces a sense of awakening — a kind of emotional hangover. The rhythm grows more anxious, the lyrics repeat in loops, and the lyrical protagonist seems trapped in a world where every day feels the same. In this way, the album doesn’t just celebrate reckless joy but also acknowledges its exhausting, sometimes destructive undercurrent.