Bleeding Rainbow’s Yeah Right, released just last year, encapsulated the sound of adolescence. It is pretty apparent from the flippancy of its title. Yeah Right was a fuzzed out record filled with songs of withering realities, while maintaining a slightly delusional refusal of these realities of growing up.
In Interrupt, Bleeding Rainbow comes full circle. Not only does the band lose the adolescent chip on its shoulder on this record, it also fully embraces aging and the changes that come with it. The album opens with “Time and Place” a full-blown, melodic thrasher about fighting off agoraphobic tendencies. The lyrics in “Time and Place,” including “I can’t breathe/I can’t see” and “All I need is a time and place to be alone” pointedly declare the need to be by oneself.
Interrupt doesn’t diverge too much sonically from Yeah Right, but the band has definitely upped the ante in terms of adding more punk to their post punk sound. It is also important to note that Bleeding Rainbow has continuously grown and morped into something louder and deeper. From its poppier beginnings as Reading Rainbow into the musicians behind Yeah Right to the older, more world weary creators of Interrupt, the band has been an exciting one to keep track of simply because of the constant maturation.
On this album’s 10 tracks, it is evident that the band is exploring societal impulses and expectations through its lyricism. Especially on the back-to-back tracks of “Tell Me” and “Start Again.” The latter, with Rob Garcia in charge of vocals, seems to be an existential rant in response to the former’s sly poking at the purveyors, gatekeepers, and tastemakers (hi!) of culture, with lines like “Tell me how I should have to behave/Tell me now before it’s too late/Tell me I don’t think for myself anyway.” Slight dissent seems to be the band’s m.o., and why shouldn’t it be? At a time where it seems like we’re all destined to be robots or become even more dependent on them, it’s nice to have Bleeding Rainbow remind us that we don’t have to obey so quietly.
Recently the band posted a streaming link for Interrupt via Pitchfork Advance on their Tumblr page. They used the tags “internet culture is weird” and “music industry amirite?” So it seems that not only is Bleeding Rainbow making digs at the music industry on their record, but also “on the record.” Where we’re in a time when everyone is so carefully curating their image — there’s also a song on the record called “Images” — and wearing kid gloves as to not offend the Big Guys (FYI, Pitchfork is definitely the big guy in this case), Bleeding Rainbow’s unheeding approach is a breath of fresh air. On Interrupt, Bleeding Rainbow stop trying to be cool and by default become cool. That’s not to say Interrupt is perfect, a little more “Tell Me” and a little less My Bloody Valentine worship (“Monochrome”) and it would have been closer to that. It is definitely their best material to date, and it’s due to the fact that it’s not the fear of missing out that drives their work any longer — it’s the act of missing out on purpose. Considering Bleeding Rainbow’s track record, I wouldn’t be surprised if their next release is even better.
Review by Alex Martinez. Follow her on Twitter @xxalexm.
