The new album from Bleached, Don't You Think You've Had Enough, drops on Dead Oceans on Friday. It is a record that's gonna get a lot of attention for how easily it re-invents AOR and punk-pop forms for a new century. If that makes it a retro release, it's one that's a good deal similar to recent offerings from Ex Hex and Bat Fangs. Bleached, to their credit, imbue this material with a lot of melody, so things are catchy, and not just loud, here, and the band's embrace of these past-forms feels slightly less ironic than it might have in other hands.
"Heartbeat Away" and "Hard to Kill" are pop stompers, while the superb "Daydream" is crunchy in the best possible way. Jessie and Jennifer Clavin are looking to the past for inspiration, clearly, but lots of what's here on Don't You Think You've Had Enough is more bright and melodic than it is derivative. "I Get What I Need" is more New Wave than pop-punk, while "Valley to LA" is an even better bit of peppy self-mythologizing. Bleached are probably going to get a lot of comparisons to Ex Hex here, but the reality is that Veruca Salt might be a better band to reference. I mean, Bleached clearly yearn for the glory days of alt-rock, at least in terms of looking for the big, fuzzy hooks, but the Clavins are also interested in melody too, enough that this record would likely succeed just as much even without the huge riffs and sleek sheen of the production. The hand-clap-anchored "Real Life", for instance, is super-catchy, and the perfect thing to crank as you tool down the highway in the summertime, but it's also a fairly thoughtful bit of modern power-pop, and nicely constructed too.
Don't You Think You've Had Enough is out on Friday via Dead Oceans.
More details on Bleached via the band's official Facebook page, or the band's official website.
[Photo: Nicky Giraffe]