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ABOUT BEDRIDDEN
Growing up is painful, brutal, and sometimes beautiful — something Brooklyn-based indie-rock band Bedridden knows all too well. The band’s name is even a nod to that ineffable period between childhood and the jagged edges of the real world. “When I was 21, I kind of lost my home,” says frontman/guitarist Jack Riley. “I was couch-surfing. I was having a hard time.”
The next iteration in the band’s maturation, then, is their debut, LP Moths Strapped To Eachother’s Backs, 10 fuzzed-out (and sometimes gnarly) ruminations on dating, drugs, and survival out April 11 on Julia’s War Recordings. The title came from a mysterious missive Riley received on astrology app Co-Star. “Last year I was way too reliant on other people — my partner at the time, my friends,” he says. “I was strapped to them in a weird way — and flying in circles. This album is about that time.”
The current incarnation of Bedridden encompasses a patchwork of styles, influences, and friends Riley accumulated over the years. A Chicago native who first started making music at age five on a thrift-store guitar emblazoned with Kurt Cobain’s name, Riley moved to New Orleans for college where he dabbled in punk before falling in love with shoegaze. There, he launched the first version of Bedridden. Sebastian Duzian (bass) — a jazz musician and Pasadena native — linked up with Riley in NOLA along with his bandmate, drummer Nick Pedroza. Pedroza, from Claremont, grew up on rock, metal, and jazz, honing his style after joining the band. Wesley Wolffe — a guitarist fed on a steady diet of New Wave and ‘90s alt — rounded out the crew just a few months back.
Bedridden’s previous lineup released their first EP, Amateur Heartthrob, in 2023 — a noise-washed blend of shoegaze, DIY, and indie that Riley says is a “coming-of-age EP — these formative stories about not having a bed, dating, being kind of a jackass. I was making fun of myself a lot.” That release caught the attention of Douglas Dulgarian from Philly Label Julia’s War Recordings (and They Are Gutting A Body of Water), who signed them for Moths.
“Some of these songs have been around for years,” says Riley, adding that they were recorded last February at Studio G Brooklyn; the album was produced by Aron Kobayashi Ritch (Momma). “As opposed to Amateur Heartthrob, we attempted to blend more clean guitars into a driving sound to capture more clarity — one that also sounds live… and raw,” Riley says. That rawness thrums through the record, which kicks off with the thrashed “Gummy,” about an incident when Riley had to gently fend off a co-worker’s unwanted advances while both drunk and high on an MDMA gummy. And then there’s mournful rager “Etch,” which sees Riley daydreaming about beating up a meddler in his personal life — in the minor key.
The annihilating “Chainsaw” revs in next, a lightning-fast Lemonheads-inspired track that recalls Riley moving in with new roommates who were unnaturally obsessed with purchasing a lamp. “For some reason that pissed me off,” he laughs; that rage is evident in the album cover, which shows said power tool demolishing a lampshade. Heavy-shredding “Heaven’s Leg” showcases the band’s affinity for ‘90s mainstays like Smashing Pumpkins while telling the tale of a gig at a local church. “The lyrics are about a pastor I had met that had lost his leg,” Riley says. “The church had signs about not cussing and I had a feeling that neither of us had anything to talk about without potentially offending the other.”
The band’s not afraid to get confrontational, though, on the anger-fueled, drum-heavy “Philadelphia, Get Me Through,” which deals with a dead-end relationship and the mistaken assumption that getting drunk in the titular city would be a balm against the pain. And the nasty, brutist, and short hardcore-adjacent “MainStage”? “It’s about being disrespected at a show on New Year’s and how I lashed out,” Riley says. “I then began to take it out on other people, which was a quality that I despise.”
Things get contemplative and mournful from here on out — the emo-edged “Snare” is about bringing flowers to a hospital room where you’re not welcome, while the Smiths-inspired “Uno” wrestles with self-loathing. “I guess the big finale of that song was my response to dealing with this recurring experience of feeling like I wasn't good enough by getting really into whippets,” Riley says. Nu-metal bop “Bonehead,” then, recalls an embarrassing dinner that turned into an argument — the name applies both to that incident and the delicious simplicity of the guitar parts.
After all that turmoil and pain, the band caps everything off with their eyes to the future on the jangle-pop “Ring Size.” “All my friends are getting married — do I follow in their footsteps? Or is it all a waste of time?” Riley says of the song. “At the end, through it all, I guess that’s what I’ve been trying to figure out — how to grow up, how to move on. I’m trying to navigate things as an adult and I’m not very good at it. But this is just the first record. This is just the beginning.”
ABOUT JULIA’S WAR RECORDINGS:
Julia’s War Recordings is a community-based record label out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but serving the greater world as a whole. Founded by Douglas Dulgarian of They Are Gutting A Body of Water in 2021, we aim to provide physical media for bands that rock, for people pushing the boundaries of music and creation in the modern-day.
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