This review was first
published on CLUAS in 2003
Other albums reviewed in 2003
Bent
Review of their album 'The Everlasting Blink'
Summer's here and the time is right for wigging out to a blow driven cross
between loved up 90s dreamers the Beloved, crossed with 80s left field funsters
It's Immaterial. Live this aural dream you'll get Bent.
Bent are similar to Lemonjelly but not quite the same. Lemonjelly dazzle us with spoken samples over killer beats and glorious melodies - they're a one trick pony but it's a great trick. Bent vary things a little more. They specialise in woozy instrumentals - 'King Wisp', (Mozart cheesed up on bad acid), 'Strictly Bongo' (champagne jazz without the froth), 'Moonbeams' (a 'Pet Sounds' rewrite), and the title track itself (imagine musical prozac backed with beats played on a thirty foot high drumkit).
They also - much like DJ Shadow - take old tunes, rejig their
arrangements, colour and shading and show them in a completely different and
more lustrous light. 'So long without you', white woman's blues sung by Billie
Jo Spears, gets the Bent treatment. With some judicious editing it's Single of
the Year material - Spears wailing in countrified sadness over a clumpy
Eurovision style bassline, a skipping rhythm track and keening pedal steel.
The Beloved tag comes to real life on 'Beautiful Otherness', where Jon Marsh -
Beloved's louche crooner - turns up on vocals. Singing over a latino scrubbed
beat, Marsh sounds as if he's being drip fed liquid bong, he sleepily name
checks 'Kind Hearts and Coronets' the Ealing classic, and manages to get away
with it. 'An ordinary day' features a disembodied Lena Martell serenading
through any amount of distortion about the pain of unrequited love, while 'Magic
love' - Bent's biggest dent on the charts - has heartache running through its
grooves. They put a sheen on an old Captain and Tenille groove. 'Magic love'
will have you dancing. With tears in your eyes.
'Everlasting Blink'. The summer album of the year.
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