REVIEW: Bleach Lab - Close to the Flame

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18:33 // July 18th, 2025 // Bleach Lab

What'd happen if you took a dream pop band, added an excellent vocalist, and produced the vocals to be, wait for it, audible? For the past few years, Bleach Lab have been daring to answer this question by existing. The British outfit's debut album Lost in a Rush of Emptiness proved to be one of 2023's most mesmerising dreamy projects, blending shimmering indie rock with intimate yet stadium-sized choruses courtesy of Jenna Kyle's gorgeous voice. Now, the fresh EP Close to the Flame successfully capitalises on this vibe and marks the band's first self-produced collection of songs.

Across its five tracks, Bleach Lab remain firmly melancholic and ethereal: each song tackles a different perspective on love from a slightly different angle of fuzzy dream pop. “Feel Something” is refreshingly upbeat in spite of its gloom, while “If I Could Be Anything” puts forth the EP's most widescreen dramatic moment by way of its glisteningly bleak chorus: “if I could be anything / I would be dead”. At times, the production underscores this excellence, but here and there, the project’s self-produced nature becomes a bit too apparent. Certain moments don't explode the way they feel like they should - “Drown"s final chorus glides in and fails to be the showstopper it could've been. “Close to the Flame”, however, successfully subverts this issue: its chorus hook is fairly buried in the mix, but feels like a stylistic choice as it transforms the inherently catchy melody into something to keep unearthing across several listens.

Above all, Close to the Flame is delightfully listenable and entirely soothing. While I wish there were more songs to dig into, this EP makes for a wonderful body of work that will hopefully form a nice bridge to the next project. Bleach Lab summer Bleach Lab summer.

8/10