Bent Knee: Bent Knee

BENT KNEE: BENT KNEE (2011)

1) Urban Circus; 2) I Don't Love You Anymore; 3) Funeral; 4) I've Been This Way Before; 5) After Years Of Love; 6) Little Specks Of Calcium; 7) Styrofoam Heart; 8) Nave.

So, what sort of music should one expect from a group named «Bent Knee»? My first answer would probably be «jazz fusion», because this is the kind of thoroughly meaningless title that we typically encounter on all-instrumental records by them jazz wankers. However, once you learn that the name is actually an amalgamation of the names of the group's leaders — guitarist Ben Levin and keyboardist/singer Courtney Swain — the answer is probably going to shift to «indie pop», because only (or at least, mostly) indie pop artists engage in that kind of silliness mixed with gratuitous egotism.

Odd enough, while Bent Knee are certainly much closer to indie pop than to jazz fusion, their project is far more ambitious than simply making music according to one or two set formulas. After all, they came together in the Berklee College of Music, which, according to the Wikipedia description, "offers college-level courses in a wide range of contemporary and historic styles, including rock, flamenco, hip hop, reggae, salsa, and bluegrass", and one would be sorely disap­pointed if the alumni of such a wonderful place would waste their tuition fees on anything less than Comprehensive and Total Eclecticism. In other words, Bent Knee make music that is all over the place — so all over the place, in fact, that they will always have a hard time trying to make us understand what exactly is it all about.

In simple terms and in the first place, it is probably all about the vocals of Courtney Swain, which happen to be the first attention-grabbing component of the record. Timbre-wise, she reminds me most of Beth Gibbons, with whom she shares similar levels of intensity and knife-sharpness; on the other hand, she is much more of a «rock» singer than Beth, and often shows a pissed-off, hysterical side that is more reminiscent of that other Courtney... (I do so hope that hard drugs are a no-no at the Berklee College, but Swain looks perfectly healthy to me). It is on the more quiet numbers, such as ʽFuneralʼ, where she tends to fade into the background: her lyrical side is com­petent, but unexceptional, and she is truly at her best when her bandmates start lighting up the little pieces of paper between her toes. They also like to put subtle, Björkish electronic effects on her vocals sometimes, or run them through an echo chamber for an even more epic reaction, which is fine enough if the source vocal is already powerful on its own.

As for the music, Bent Knee is hard to categorize in any other terms than the general designation of «indie rock», whatever that term is supposed to mean in the 2010s. Thus, ʽUrban Circusʼ opens proceedings in near-classic «industrial» mode, with distorted factory-level power blasts against which Swain's desperate voice is battling as against prison bars. It's like the gloom of classic Portishead, enhanced by the cling-clang of classic Nine Inch Nails, though not as deep penetra­ting as either: Bent Knee have the typical «college kid» problem in that, as artists, it is hard for them to go all the way — they are, apparently, a bunch of deeply normal and well-meaning young people, greatly moved and influenced by their moves and influences, but not as deeply disturbed and wasted as any of those influences. Still, the very first track shows that they know how to create a good old ruckus, and how to make the listener pay attention by cleverly using the loud-quiet dynamics, integrating acoustic and electronic elements, and merging together elements of ye olde blues-rock, noise, and avantgarde jazz.

Perhaps their biggest mistake is in trying to make themselves look «darker» than they actually are. Most of the songs have a sweeping tragic feel; most of the lyrics are about relationships gone wrong and the cosmic consequences of that; most of the time Courtney Swain sounds either angry at her man, sad about her man, or crazy because her man drove her to it. It rarely seems sincere, and the overall feel is more theatrical, reaching vaudevillian peaks when they actually go for straightahead vaudeville — once, on the crazy polka number ʽI've Been This Way Beforeʼ — but always feeling like they are just putting on a show for us even on the most «intimate» numbers (the acoustic ballad ʽAfter Years Of Loveʼ, which eventually grows into a lushly psychedelic Floydian meadow of chiming pianos, slide guitars, and distant vocal harmonies). Nevertheless, almost everything they do is interesting at least in some respect: every track shows either musical or, yep, theatrical creativity.

Thus, ʽI Don't Love You Anymoreʼ in its first fifteen seconds combines impressionist piano playing, synth-pop, and «heavy industrial blues-rock» — with the guitarist throwing in a flashy Van Halen-esque guitar solo, and Swain's multi-tracked vocals raising fifty times more hell around her imaginary lover than, say, a Taylor Swift could do with an army of producers behind her back. On ʽLittle Specks Of Calciumʼ, they invent a cozy little twee-pop melody only to de­construct it to total minimalism, and then follow it up with a moody dialog between incompatible lovers ("but you are frozen... cold... frozen... cold..." — "and you are burning me alive! you are burning me alive!") that is a great find by itself (I only wish they could have found a better musi­cal realisation for it, with two counter-motifs, perhaps, rather than this monotonous industrial pump). And on the album's longest track, ʽStyrofoam Heartʼ, they combine everything they got (gorgeous singing, hysterical singing, beautiful harmonies, ominous harmonies, romantic piano rolls, heavy metal, and mourning woo-woo-woos that seem incidentally ripped off from Radio­head's ʽStreet Spiritʼ — which reminds me that I probably did not yet mention Radiohead as a serious influence on these guys, but then, should I really have?..).

The good news, then, is that Bent Knee created their own sound; the bad news is that they have not been able to solve the nagging problem — this sound is all too easily decomposed into con­stituents, each of which on its own is ultimately preferable to the synthesis. Yet even so, the band manages to stand out against its peers by taking things to an overall higher level of intensity than most do. And the fact that they have set themselves such a wide territory to cover with their for­mula also made it worth the while to hold your breath and wait for whatever else they might have in store for us. In the meantime, this self-titled debut certainly deserves its thumbs up.