Bleached with No Parents at The Garrison

Photos by Daniela Tantalo

It’s been years since the Bleached girls (and boy) passed through Toronto promoting their debut album, Ride Your Heart (2011) for an exceptional performance at the Silver Dollar. This time around at the Garrison, they let the audience in on what they’ve been up the last five years with the newly released sophomore record, Welcome the Worms.

The quartet takes to the daisy-adorned instruments on stage, with led singer sisters Jennifer and Jessica Calvin at the forefront, beginning promptly with “Trying to Lose Myself Again”, the perfect embodiment of their focus for this album. Welcome the Worms mounts less sing-song-60s, and more hard rock 70s. This explains the 90s grunge-punk choice of tour opener, No Parents, and their magical charm-killer lead, Zoe Reign, who joined Bleached on stage for renditions of their own “Sour Candy” and “Think of you”.

Not sure if it was the lighting-tech issues that persisted to leave the bands’ drummers in the dark, or the occasional feedback, but truly, Jennifer seemed borderline disinterested during the first few songs. Like the tour had become her personal day-job cubicle. But the energy quickly changed after the end of older cut “Next Stop”, when the band got into “Keep On Keepin’ On”, leading to a string of high-end performances. Best of all surprisingly was “Sleepwalking”, where Jennifer ditches her guitar for the mic in hand. It’s her at her most introspective, yet also extroverted, getting up close to the crowd singing “It’s really too bad to feel like walking death / but now my eyes are open wide” as she wraps the mic-chord around her face and body in an effort that seems unconscious. “Sleepwalking my whole life / Wasn’t until now I finally see the light” she belts as fast drums crash around her for an abrupt end.

Other songs worked well live for a different reason, playing to older sing-song tricks like on “Searching Through The Past”, “Waiting By The Telephone”, and show closer “Dead In Your Head”. They also worked in a standout track from the new record, “Wednesday Night Melody”. It is a clear resolution that marries the strengths of both albums, with Jennifer arguably singing the band’s catchiest hook yet, ‘Come on boy dry your eyes / Its good to feel just a little alive / Drag a needle on the groove today / And waste away, just waste away’ followed by Jessica’s speedy-textured guitar riff.

The show is at its most fun when the band plays to their do-whatever-you-want, drunk-punk spirit—an element that has been vital to Bleached’s persona. Once they hit their stride, it was clear of what worked best about this new album. They had embraced the serrated edge of their surf rock aesthetic. Looking at the evidence—the band’s second album, persona as a whole, feistier stage moments—it makes sense; when Bleached take charge of the “punk” in their pop, they figuratively speaking, hit the right notes.