"Pyschedelic Shoepunk Post-gaze" is Bleeding Rainbow's genre legend on their Facebook. I guess so. My notes were a little more disruptive in their disrupting middle set, opening for Cloud Nothings at the Studio At Webster Hall on Thursday night. The drummer Sarah is wearing a Black Flag tee shirt and maybe its me, but for all the sonic haha, Bleeding Rainbow can't stop the punk and the melody bubbling up from the sound. Makes me wonder why they don't give JAMC props along with Sonic Youth and My Funny Valentine.
The guitarist looks like a young (HBO Mass Murderer) Dexter, and comes to terms with his instrument in a steely grip and terse riffs which hand me wondering where the melodies were coming from and the bassist looked like a new romantic fop tangling with feedback.
Sometimes the songs work their way into mental masturbation sonic plankdom, and sometimes they are quite remarkable. Towards the end there was a song based solely upon one chord and it was a rvelation, almost how a band that has been around for four years can find a way forward. Later still a new song careened between a Ramonesy power punk rock and a doomy metal visage. The effect was terrific and unnerving at the same time, and the singing duo of Sara and Al, not harmonizing but ramming the voices together, almost making up for the lack of a great singer.
I wish they'd been a little louder and I wish they'd been a little more personable. I've noticed that sonic yahoos try to create an atmosphere and even something as simple as "buy our EP" upsets the atmosphere. But that doesn't excuse that if this stuff ain't making your ears bleed, it ain't doing its job.
Still, the band did get the momentum they wanted, and given the genre they are exercising in, they quite often transformed it with songs that keep on peaking out from the rumbling of strum and feedback.
Good band, I wouldn't mind hearing them on record and checking them out again.
Grade: B