Bleached write the kind of love songs that make you want to pack up and move to California. It's probably because of the balmy bass lines, or their impossibly bright guitar hooks, or the way that even the most dejected lyrics sound like the adolescent anxieties of a lovesick West Coast teen. For the couple of minutes of a Bleached song it seems entirely plausible, like maybe you could just sell all of your winter clothes on eBay, buy a non-stop plane ticket to LAX and crash on your screenwriter friend's couch in Silver Lake for the rest of time. But when the track ends, so does the fantasy, and you remember that sometimes it rains in California, too.
On Ride Your Heart, Bleached's long-awaited debut LP, sisters and former-Mika Miko members Jennifer and Jessie Clavin prove to be masters of fleeting moments. They turn short-term heartache and temporary daydreams into breezy, economic, instantly re-playable pop-punk. Pretty much every song is likable, but the saccharine melodrama of "Dead in Your Head" and the year-old single "Searching Through The Past" are especially affecting. Ride Your Heart comes out April 2 via Dead Oceans. Pre-order it here. For more, revisit our 2011 GEN F on the band.
Stream: Bleached's Ride Your Heart