There were the smiling-elegant-looking one wearing a black hat and a mini skirt, the fun-sporty one with the red baseball jacket, and the serious-tomboy one wearing a jean jacket with snickers, and rarely cracking a smile: the girl-group Bleached closed the night last Monday at the Echo, with Ramones-que surf-punk riffs mixed with something of the 60s.
I like girl groups and after a line-up full of guys, it was a nice surprise. They were the 4th band of the night and they naturally thanked everyone for staying so late. The two blonde frontgirls, the Clavin sisters (Jessica and Jennifer), used to be in another band named Mika Miko, whose first album was released by Post-Present Medium and Kill Rock Stars in 2006, but disbanded in 2009. After Jennifer's adventure with East Coast goth-synth project Cold Cave, the two sisters were back on the scene of the Echo with this new line-up (Katie Inman and Danny Diaz) and a lot of fuzzy guitars, plenty of girl-group-vocal harmonies, strummy and catchy melodies under some punk bouncy numbers. Their songs may have appeared sunnier than the Dum Dum Girls', and punkier than Best Coast's, but they sounded like everything you have heard in this genre, and then, original at the same time, if this makes any sense.
The band has an upcoming 7” ‘Carter’ to be released on July 19th on Art Fag Records, but they seemed to have plenty of songs in store: