3 out of 5

Label: Rise Records

Produced by: Violeta Félix

Sometimes when that band that you like delivers a “different” album, you know it’s just a prelude to the artist going pop, or whatever ‘pop’ is in the relevant genre. This isn’t always a bad thing, of course; sometimes it is a natural evolution, and when you trace it back, you can hear whatever the group would become in their origins.

Le Butcherettes have certainly never been too far removed from pop, in the same way that punk is kind of just an amplified and sped up version of it. Teri Gender Bender’s frontperson energy always elevated the band, alongside a heavy rock pedigree from her bandmates / crew that helped to emphasize the playing and compositional skill she added and was backed up by; by the time of bi/MENTAL it wasn’t necessarily a surprise that they started to heavily incorporate a wider sonic palette beyond their garage / punk rock starting point, as that was on the aforementioned evolutionary track, but it also ended up making sense that that would be (as of this writing) the last full album of original material under that band name – the sound was on the verge of becoming something different; the concept had been pushed as far as possible.

And Don’t Bleed is, to me, a change such that it’s arguably not wholly Le Butcherettes anymore. We poke and prod around the sound, absolutely, but this is enough of a shift towards St. Vincent style oddball pop – even in Bender’s presentation, and lyrical focus – that it feels like something different; I would not identify this as Le Butcherettes if their name wasn’t on the cover, and being told it in retrospect, I’d still push back: really?

It is not, by any means, that this is a bad set. By those St. Vincent-y standards, it’s damn good. It’s concise; Bender starts in LB territory with the title track’s paranoia / empowerment ode to periods (so says my very limited read on it) before shifting over to more general relationship studies on the B-side’s tracks, and the music molds from the closest to Butcherettes territory – the very bi/MENTAL, heavy hitting, twisted post-rock of Out For You – to the indie pop of Don’t Bleed and Now I Know, to the radio-friendly Taylor Swiftiness of Love Someone; all excellently produced with depth and delightful touches that still bump it into light art-rock territory at points. But if you were starting this journey from the group’s first album, even, as mentioned, Teri’s elevated style is toned down to match the shift in music, something that was still very much in place on bi/MENTAL.

So by the terms of what I would want from LB, as a next step from that album, it’s something that maintains a bit more of an edge. It’s all been sanded down here, from the music, to the singing, to the lyrics. The sanding down is not inherently bad, but the net result just gives me a different experience, and I think it’s okay to want something from a band – it’s why we follow them, after all.