Sleigh Bells, “Rill Rill” (2010)
find it on Treats

The last time I wrote about Sleigh Bells, it brought on a pretty great debate about their in-the-red volume, and I assume that those of you who were turned off by their sound haven’t had your minds changed. But this is the softer side of Sleigh Bells: the brilliance without the abrasives. Built around a Funkadelic sample (and a great song itself), it’s a chill pop tune that could soundtrack some movie’s sunset-drenched happy ending.

As an aside, it’s also one of the best uses of a sample in recent memory, a perfect example of how sampling is modern folk music: the appropriation of one song into another. Not copyright theft or cover, but simply the same background with a different story. “Rill Rill” replaces “Can You Get To That”‘s soul with pop and adds a genius punctuation of a heavy bass drum and bell, but it still shares melodic touchstones as well as the acoustic guitar backing.

Happy summertime…