It’s catchy. It’s riffy. But it’s definitive shoegaze punk.
“Yeah Right,” the third studio album from the Philadelphia band Bleeding Rainbow, comes powering through any set of speakers as a spirited revival of the distorted and defected guitars of the ’90s. “Yeah Right” is the group’s first full album since 2010, and its first since the addition of two members, making the band a quartet.
The band’s strongest work is showcased by the opening track, “Go Ahead” – one that sets the rhythm and emotion for the entire record. The drumming is steady and hesitant, nicely contrasting with the classic sounds of shoegaze guitar, which uses an effects pedal to create distortion. And the voice of founding member Sarah Everton softly blends into a lullaby gone terribly wrong.
The distinction that is heard from the crunchy electric guitars of Rob Garcia and Al Creedon, twisting its flavors from grunge to punk in eight measures, and Everton’s gentle vocals, creates a surrealistic sound on the album that sets it high above other works. This is heard most resonantly on “Go Ahead,” where Everton’s words, “I don’t know where I am going to / Talking to you is all I ever do,” seem to fly apart from Garcia’s distortion.
The simplicity of Everton’s clean vocals and Garcia’s low harmonie ties the vocals into the instruments throughout the album. Rather than isolating every instrument, especially vocals, above all the rest, as is the case in much popular music, Bleeding Rainbow manages to meld the quartet in a single sound: an indie sound of punk shoegaze, as the band describes it.
Tracks on the album such as “Pink Ruff” and “Losing Touch” present more of a punk rock side, with a quick and basic rhythm section from the bass and drums, while still preserving the band’s ability to meddle with guitar effects. Consequently, when the album shifts to songs that seem to center around the shoegaze sound, including the single “Drift Away,” the band cannot keep away from bringing the hard overdrives of its punk rock edge.
The album is dynamic, without question.
The vocal harmonies, which are at times undetectable due to the mixing levels of Garcia’s voice, create a padded effect. In a result that builds contrast and bridges the sound gap between the band, Everton’s vocals often are accompanied by an effect that runs over Garcia’s soft bass vocals. While their presence is not always clear, they significantly tie Everton’s soprano back to the grungy sound of the band.
While Everton’s voice is not noticeably strong, “Yeah Right” grants 11 solid opportunities for simplistic and melodious vocals. Built through Everton and Garcia’s harmonies is a decent vocal output, but catchy nonetheless.
What moves this album from a decent, if not good, effort to mix shoegaze with indie punk to an early favorite album of 2013 is the band’s ability to handle its grungy and distorted mess of a sound so orchestrally. When the chaotic sounds of the guitars are arranged precisely, the band doesn’t sound like a group of noisy panderers, but becomes almost symphonic. At the end of “Go Ahead,” when Creedon’s guitar effects begin to take over with a screeching cadence on the original riff, the song becomes ethereal. It’s clouded; it’s noisy. But through the buzzing of both guitars and through an album of effects covering every inch of the guitar, this album becomes an entity that is rare today.
Perhaps “Yeah Right” is twenty years too late, or perhaps Bleeding Rainbow’s newest album is the beginning of a shoegaze punk rock revival, a madness of melody.
Email Hornbostel at bhornbostel@media.ucla.edu.