The Bleachers - Suspicion

The Bleachers - Suspicion
(2006, Village Industries)

The first two and a half minutes of Suspicion paints a densely moody backdrop for the rest of the album to play-out against. Its a foggy, billowing, wastland of a world with the soft rumblings of thunderclouds far off in the distance. Once the instrumentalists cast off the droning and chanting and lurch foreward into the body of "Witch Trials" however, everything explodes into a controlled but primal flash. Guitars shimmer, drums pound and the bass carries most of the melody as dreamily processed vocals echo to and fro.
Why The Bleachers inspire comparisons to early R.E.M. is beyond me. I mean yeah, the guitars DO jangle and shimmer most of the time and the lyrics are of the hard-to-understand-and-incomprehensible-when-you-do variety, but that's where the similarities end. This trio from Las Vegas is actually more like a striking mix of The Charlatans U.K. and Bauhaus. They've got the shoegazer ear for dreamy melody but a menacing, neo-industrial edge that keeps things nice and interesting.
Another thing I love about Suspicion is that the individual songs, although although being diverse and distinctive, create an emotional arc that connects the album as a single movement. The gentle acoustic melodies of "Don't Make No Roads", the metallic claning of "Slumberjack #2" and the acid house rockout of "Poltergeist" don't simply coexist in a disjointed jumble but rather flow in a logical progression which connects the album as a single body.