Bunky Becky Birthday Boy

By giving equal time to headbanging and heartbreak, they've made an immensely satisfying album that's among their finest.

They pair their trademark hard-and-soft contrast – a sound which, in hindsight, could be deemed proto-hyperpop – with a litany of references that bring to mind Dua Lipa’s concept of ‘Future Nostalgia’, or a reverse Back To The Future Part II, in which Alexis and bandmate Derek Miller present an imagined late-21st Century past via a vivid 2025 lens.

The album's relatively narrow focus does it few favours here; its reluctance to experiment outside of sparkly, quickfire bangers inadvertently spotlights how the appeal of its weaker cuts is directly interchangeable with that of the highlights.

Bunky Becky Birthday Boy is a return to the immediacy that made Sleigh Bells’ name – but you wonder whether they had to sacrifice quite so much of the nuance of their last couple of albums in the process.

Even tracks that circle around a hazily imagined apocalypse—“This summer might be your last!”—can’t summon more than half a head bob. There’s enough energy pumping through these songs to move the 32-minute album along, but it feels like you’re slouching through the moving walkway at an airport. “Hi Someday” is an exception.