Bleached sisters unleashed their inner guitar heroes

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      Personal chaos can be strangely inspiring, as Bleached has certainly proven on its dark and driving sophomore album, Welcome the Worms.

      Going into the creation of the record, the band’s two founders—guitarist-singer Jennifer Clavin and her guitarist sister Jessica—weren’t exactly in the most emotionally stable of places. Relationships had imploded, eviction notices had been served, partying was at a redline pitch, and the world was moving at an out-of-control pace. One of the downsides of living in the major metropolis of Los Angeles was that city life intensified everything.

      The way the Clavins coped was by realizing that sometimes the best way to deal with craziness is to decompress. The siblings decamped to Joshua Tree, which—as those lucky enough to have been there will attest—has a desert-town vibe a million miles removed from Tinseltown.

      “I feel like this record was very therapeutic, but I don’t think we realized that until we finished it,” Jessica says, on her cellphone from a tour van headed to Denver. “We were going through a lot of chaotic stuff, which I know is what contributed to a lot of Jen’s really honest lyrics. At the end of the day, it was like we had our music to go to, to help us escape. At Joshua Tree we didn’t have Internet, which I was really stoked about because I’m already a little off the grid.”

      When not recharging with walks in the desert, the Clavins spent their time at Joshua Tree binge-writing, eventually coming up with 30 songs. Ten of those would make the cut for Welcome the Worms, a record that finds the sweet spot between guitar-roar punk and candy-sheen hard pop, with Jennifer sounding as street-tough as she is hopelessly heartbroken.

      Watch Bleached's "Keep On Keepin' On".

      The wonderfully analogue-sounding production, courtesy of Joe Chiccarelli, is a big part of the record’s charm. When the Clavins first approached the producer, it was made clear they couldn’t afford him. Quickly, though, it became obvious that Chiccarelli—a veteran who’s worked with everyone from Elton John and Counting Crows to the Strokes and Cage the Elephant—was a Bleached fan.

      He’d eventually help the band toughen up while moving away from the spawn-of-the-Shangri-Las surf-pop that marked 2013’s debut disc, Ride Your Heart.

      “He wasn’t going to do the record when we first met with him—our budget was too low—but he still wanted to meet with us,” Jessica recounts. “We took in everything he said and all the advice he had. One of the things that he said that really struck us was ‘I want people to put this record on and get scared.’ We were really excited about that. He was like a lost uncle. And luckily, he phoned the next day wanting to do the record. He knew the sound that we’ve always wanted but haven’t known how to make happen.”

      Touchstones for that sound include everyone from punk visionaries Minor Threat to trailblazing queens of noize the Runaways to ’70s rock gods Fleetwood Mac.

      The Clavins aren’t shy about unleashing their inner guitar heroes on standouts like the maximum-overdrive “Trying to Lose Myself Again” and the bass-strafed “Desolate Town”. But counterbalancing the distortion-powered aggression are lyrics that hint someone did some serious hurting in the frenzied months leading up to the writing of Welcome the Worms. (Sample lines include “’Cause I’m drowning for you today” from “Keep on Keepin’ On”, and “It’s really too bad to feel like walking death/But now my eyes are open wide” from “Sleepwalking”.)

      Such moments are enough to suggest the Joshua Tree sessions did a lot of good.

      “I don’t think we went there to completely escape, because at the end of the day Jen was really honest about what she was going through,” Jessica says. “It’s more like she was able to let everything out.”

      Bleached plays the Biltmore Cabaret on Thursday (April 28).

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