behalf. The drums were recorded at Cherokee Studios in Los Angeles, which proved costly to the group. The band took a brief break to tour with Jebediah for two-and-a-half weeks, including a performance at CMJ New Music Marathon festival, before returning to Los Angeles. To save money, sessions moved to Harddrive in North Hollywood, where they did overdubs over the course of a month and a half from November2000. Partway through, at the suggestion of Trombino, the band uploaded demo versions of songs on the music platform Napster for fans to hear. By this point, artists and repertoire (A&R) people from various labels visited the band, often unannounced. As a result of this, they had to lock the doors to keep people out. The album was mixed at South Ecstasy Recording Studio, also in Los Angeles, in January2001. As Lind was writing a check to cover the cost of mixing, he was worried they were close to bankruptcy, and hoped it would not bounce. Lyrical themes and musical style Overview The material on Bleed American was more accessible and aggressive than its predecessor Clarity, which had a more "layered, sprawling sound." In regard to the stylistic approach of the album, Adkins said, "Things still got pretty gnarly in the studio as far as experimentation, but it was always to an end that was to the song. We wanted to really make sure that we weren't doing things, like, just to put a wacky keyboard sound in. It had to be doing something constructive for the song." They intentionally strayed away from the complex writing of Clarity for simpler structures. "Hear You Me" and "My Sundown" were initially intended for Go Big Casino, Adkin's orchestral side project. Critics have described the genres of the album as alternative rock, emo pop, pop-punk and power pop. According to Adkins, the band called the album Bleed American as it and the title-track dealt with "chang[ing] one's lie for the better", and as such that theme "runs throughout the entire album". He also stated that people "all too often get caught up with things they don't really need. America just needs to be a strong bloodletting process". The lyrical composition in Bleed American also remained rather direct and straightforward in comparison to Clarity. Mark Vanderhoff of AllMusic said that Bleed American didn't have any "16 minute songs," referencing "Goodbye Sky Harbor" from Clarity. Rather, he