Photo by Debi Del Grande
Today, Bleached return with a brand new EP called Can You Deal?. Apple Music and Spotify subscribers can stream it in its entirety below.
Due out through Dead Oceans, the four-track effort follows their sophomore album, 2016’s well-received Welcome the Worms. According to the Los Angeles pop punk three-piece, the material on Can You Deal? is fueled by all the “insulting and reductive” gender-based labeling that Bleached have had thrown their way over the years.
Singer/guitarist Jennifer Clavin elaborated in a press statement:
“I create music and art because I need to. To express, to bond, to reconcile, and to connect. And to use my voice. To have it received with such a generic labeling as ‘girl band’ and consistently referenced as ‘female fronted’ is insulting and reductive. The title track to this EP, ‘Can You Deal?’ is about this experience. Last year we released a deeply personal full length album titled Welcome The Worms. It was a record about being in an emotionally abusive relationship. It was a record about getting spun out on drugs and alcohol. It was a record about totally losing myself in order to find myself. It was also our most ambitious body of work yet, with guitar work and guitar sounds and production we had only dreamed of until then. And yet to this day I am still fielding interview questions that have more to do with my gender than with the art I am creating. Somehow the conversation usually derails into some variation of the following question: ‘What is it like to be a girl in a rock band?’. And the ensuing story will define us based on our sex. Why is gender pointed out in nearly all coverage of our band? Labeling me as a woman in a band just puts me in a box, and doesn’t allow everything else I am to be seen and heard. It’s 2017, Can You Deal with women playing rock and roll yet?”
Update: Bleached have shared a video for the EP’s title track.
To coincide with the EP, the group is also putting out a zine of “shared experiences on this subject through essay, visual art, poetry, lyrics and more” from artists like Tegan Quin of Tegan and Sara, Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz, Hayley Williams of Paramore, EMA, Liz Phair, Julien Baker, Mish Way of White Lung, Hinds, and Lizzo. All proceeds will benefit Planned Parenthood. For more info, head here.
Can You Deal? Tracklist:
01. Can You Deal?
02. Flipside
03. Turn to Rage
04. Dear Trouble
