Bleeding Rainbow engages with Bishop fans

The Bishop Bar's playboard read Bleeding Rainbow Saturday night because about a year ago Portlandia’s Carrie Brownstein decided she didn’t like the name Reading Rainbow.

As the band was already living in fear of a cease-and-desist letter from PBS, the Philly foursome decided to switch "reading" to "bleeding."

“Probably the best name of all time was already taken,” frontwoman Sarah Everton said. “That being Sonic Youth, and I’m not saying that just because they’re awesome.”

The band said it agreed that the name wasn’t a hard decision and in a post on their website they termed Bleeding Rainbow “trippy as shit.”

Guitarist Rob Garcia said they’re sticking with the name for this reason and that a mere name shouldn’t matter much as the sound.

Pitchfork reviewer Stephen Hyden, who in his review of Bleeding Rainbow’s latest album, “Yeah Right,” claimed the name switch signified the change from “twee” and “cutesy” to a darker “shoegaze-infused pop” sound where the band attempted to be cool. The band came back with a public response that basically tagged the review as condescending.

Everton said the timing was more coincidence than planned, and lead guitarist Al Creedon just said it was a general time of transition.

“We just took too long to do the album because we were still trying to find out who we were,” lead guitarist Al Creedon said.

Over a short span of time Everton moved from drums to bass to highlight her vocals, they signed Greg Frantz to drums and added Creedon to guitar with Garcia just before dropping Frantz altogether and picking up Dominique Montgomery.

 “But now we’re hyper-prepared,” Creedon said.  “We know what we want.”

With a new confidence that might have been spurred by a recent tour, fans can expect a new album no later than the beginning of next year, the band said. But before the band could get home to start working, they had to finish their tour — last stop, Bloomington.

Garcia thanked the Bishop sound engineer, saying the acoustics sounded good from stage with a response that sometimes the high frequency needed bodies to pull it off. There were about 10 summer attendees in attendance, included one man who resorted to covering his ears to the increasing volume of the set.

Two fans after the show joined the band at a back booth to ask them a few questions of their own, the first being who the band was influenced by.

“No one,” Everton said. This did somehow spur into a conversation of bands they liked to listen to including B-52’s, which got a laugh from the fans.

Fans will have to wait for the students to return and eventually Bleeding Rainbow to with their next album to see if it worked.

“We’ll always catch Bloomington either coming in or out from tour,” Everton said.