Diandra Reviews It All

I begin my review of Can You Deal with a “F-YEAH!”. I think it is a term Bleached would appreciate for its excitement and a slight affront to the “clean” version of joy. Los Angeles based, punk band led by sisters Jennifer and Jessica Clavin, offer Can You Deal as a spliced and diced re-telling of their personal lives. For these sisters music is the soundtrack to their reality, and reality is based on how you relate to others and yourself.

The four track EP comes of like the beginning of a punk-rock film. Can You Deal feels like the opening sequence to a film about wasted youth wearing their torn, spiked gear, drinking from the bottle, and making dirty jokes as Bleached plays in the living room. This a vivid vision but I love a good punk band, especially one that loudly and abrasively approaches how torn relationships can leave us. Track 1, “Can You Deal”, is basically the question every person has to ask to anyone trying to enter their world, “Can you deal…. with my darkness?”. Of course, you can be loved when you are happy and great, but what happens when you are moody and antagonistic? Jennifer Clavin has a bubblegum pop voice that has been chewed by razor-teeth lyrics. She has a wonderful ability of vocally sweetening the thematic boredom that is punk. While most define punk as a sonic epicenter of angst and anger, which is not wrong, it is also a genre that elaborates how bored one can be when society or the people he or she “loves” misunderstands his or her being. Enter “Flipside” as a lyrical furthering that Bleached only wants “real” people around them because only they can truly love. Compared to the first song, “Flipside” adds a waviness to Bleached’s guitar melodies that transition them from punk- rock to surf-punk.

From “Turn To Rage” to “Dear Friend”, Bleached knows how to bring fluidity to the crashing sonics of punk. While their arrangements are deliciously “in your face”, they have a subtle flow to them that makes each song connect to the other in overarching pace/aura. While this is certainly an album to put on blast and headbang to, Can You Deal is also has a greater depth/human analysis then initially perceived. Their ability to pop a piercing guitar or pounce a warring drum is not just to sound “punk” but to also represent the emotional loneliness that courses through each song and culminates in one of the best sad, punk songs ever “Dear Friend”. For some reason, listening to this song felt culminating to both Bleached’s spirt and that of punk, itself; it is a music to analyze how you can feel so alone even when surrounded. While punk music is about society disconnecting from you, Bleached have added more nuisance by questioning why you are disconnected from society. Sometimes, its not about “fitting in” to your surroundings as much as questioning why you don’t feel like you fit in anywhere: even you own skin. For More Information On Bleached And To Buy Can You Deal On March 3 Click Here.