By Berlinda Recacho
Music is maybe the only safe way to channel emotion and feelings without ramifications or consequences. Think about it: one song can rev up angry thoughts, while another tune slips into the depths of sadness, and yet another floats up out of the abyss. Through music, you can track the whole rise and fall of a relationship in a language that other people can understand and say, nodding, I've been there too.
London-based quartet Bleach Lab chronicles the implosion of love in their debut album Lost in a Rush of Emptiness. The record cannonballs into a pool of yearning, the first song like the drag of a backstroke through dark water. Sparkles of harmonics cut through guitarist Frank Wates's unraveling riffs as Jenna Kyle's voice glides by, one minute teasing in "All Night": "You call me crazy/why'd you want to do that, baby?/I've been waiting all night for you", and admonishing, even threatening in the next: "You could tell all your friends that I broke you apart/I could do it again/ And that's where it ends." The jubilant "Indigo" is an anthem to obsession and backsliding, as Kyle admits, "The worst thing that you could do/ was lead me back to you." The music and lyrics work together in syzygy, conjuring up updated images of Lloyd Dobler standing outside Diane Court's house with today's equivalent of a boombox: "Why throw stone at my glass home/with a message on a pebble, you let me know/you're outside, with a speaker on your phone/You play a song/that I don't know." "Saving All Your Kindness" is upbeat in its denial, lamenting that the beloved may physically be present but already emotionally gone: "Is there someone you’re holding out for?/Baby, I've been lying to myself/Are you saving all your kindness/ and hope for someone else?"
The Lost in a Rush of Emptiness videos (directed by Edward Heredia) further showcase Bleach Lab's cinematic tendencies, to create vivid scenes out of sound, matching the music to stylish and brooding shorts. The somber "Counting Empties" occurs amid the beautiful wreckage of a house, broken mirrors reflecting its occupants performing a crash course in doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different outcome: "Hide emotions deep beneath the ground/underneath the floorboards I hear a sobbing sound." With drummer Shawn Courtney keeping time with a military march beat, Kyle declares with quiet desperation: "Eventually we're meant to be... until you love me/a side of you I'll never see/I'll give you a week or three/ to be in the state you need to be/to love me and all that means." The result is a sigh of resignation. The sultry and unapologetic "Nothing Left to Lose" comes to life with Kyle confessing: "Honestly, this is never what I wanted/Too scared to jump so I stay where I started." The push of an elevator button transports the band swooning and swaggering through a hazy hallucinogenic rave where a jumping, pulsing crowd includes a tableau vivant of Rene Magritte's surrealist painting The Lovers -- a kissing couple whose heads are obscured by draped fabric -- illustrating the lyric, "If you dive right in/without knowing where you’re headed."
The band works together with impressive precision, attuned to the balance of each song. Josh Longman's insistent bass-line drives as Kyle's voice soars and dips paying homage to Shirley Manson and Garbage in "Everything at Once" with a clever and acerbic lyric: "I've been alone for so long/because I'd rather feel nothing than everything at once/I was searching for a home/but I was looking in the wrong place." At the midpoint of the album, "Never Coming Back" chronicles the lowest point of recovery, a haunting reminder to move on from the damage and rubble without falling victim to the siren song of rose-tinted memories. "Smile for Me" and "Life Gets Better" are the first uncertain steps out of the shadows. "Leave the Light On" might have been a long lost song by The Sundays, the rolling guitars and gently delivered elegy a shimmering mirror of error and regret: "Temporary love/I've fallen hard/this is where it ends for us?/I’ve been waiting..." "(Coda)" is a transitional instrumental moment that leads back to the beginning of the album if you have it on repeat, starting the cycle again, hopefully wiser and better able to weather those slings and arrows.
Bleach Lab are no strangers to release days; this may be their first album, but since 2019 they’ve dropped several singles and EPs, including 2021's "Nothing Feels Real", which was my introduction to their musical depth. There is a confidence and assuredness in their approach that belies the fact that they are a young band. Lost in a Rush of Emptiness captures the sound of a relationship shattering under pressure, when the remaining shards reflect hard truths and reveal ingrained habits amid nostalgic pangs of longing. True emptiness is rare; what seems to be a void is actually full of things you can’t see. The band leads by example, turning on a pin and plummeting down, then racing back up with an adrenaline rush, detecting and describing what is invisible to the naked eye through lush and thrilling soundscapes.
Lost in a Rush of Emptiness by Bleach Lab is out now. Details below.
[Photo: Bleach Lab Bandcamp]