Bent Knee was the band that ultimately inspired me to attend the 2016 Prog Day Festival, an annual two-day outdoor event in my old stomping grounds of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, held over the Labor Day weekend. In my initial "prog renaissance" of the 1990s, Prog Day was one of several progressive rock-oriented festivals that sprouted around the US, but Prog Day was special to me. First, it was closest to where I lived (about a 7-hour drive from Atlanta), but more importantly, it was small, accessible, and featured lesser known, up-and-coming bands.
Although I attended several Prog Days in the 1990s, for various reasons I stopped going, although I never stopped missing it. By 2016, I had made several friends online that all planned to attend that year, and although I was unfamiliar with headliner Bent Knee's music, I had heard enough about them to know that their upcoming appearance created a lot of excitement. So I finally broke my 15+ year absence to attend the festival once again and was glad to see that very little about it had changed in the interim. I've tried to make a point of attending regularly ever since. Bent Knee's live performance, incidentally, was riveting - their youthful energy, turn-on-a-dime changes, and dramatic songs kept my eyes and ears absorbing every moment.
On paper, Bent Knee are a group of college-age classmates at the Berklee College of Music, and had formed a band to indulge their adventurous souls and talented chops. The band name is an elision of the names of the band's founders: guitarist Ben Levin and vocalist/keyboardist Courtney Swain (Ben + Courtney = Bentney). They are the two members most responsible for the band's direction and compositions. Swain in particular stands out, and clearly the band's songs are written to feature her impressive vocal power and range. Joining Levin and Swain are bassist/singer Jessica Kion, violinist Chris Baum, drummer Gavin Wallace-Ailsworth, and a wildcard - Vince Welch, who is a full-time band member but is credited with "production and sound design". In essence, Welch is the Brian Eno of the band. On stage Welch sits in the back behind a laptop and does all kinds of weird things to their sound, giving their music sound an otherworldly atmosphere like that heard on Say So, the band's third album (released on Cuneiform; their first two albums were self-released).
Say So fills me with a range of mixed emotions whenever I play it. The album spans the whole range of styles from pop-friendly to nightmarish to gently beautiful to avant-garde, often without much warning. As a guy who admittedly doesn't usually pay much attention to lyrics, the lyrics and vocal arrangements of Bent Knee really hit me in the gut. Swain has the technical skill to squeeze every bit of emotion out of her lyrics, and she often sings of the stresses and insecurities of being a woman in the modern world. The songs are arranged in as dramatic a fashion as possible, often foregoing the verse/chorus format in favor of simply following the emotion of the texts, with the band supporting this path every step of the way.
Standouts include the opening two tracks (which I like to consider as a pair): "Black Tar Water" and the "Leak Water". "Black Tar Water" is tender and gentle, with Swain hitting high swooping notes that always give me chills. "Leak Water" continues the mood but with a more rhythmic approach. The album starts to get pretty weird after that. "Counselor" is a tense musical drama that seems to be sung from the point of view of a woman on the verge of a breakdown, with sudden musical shifts and loud/quiet dynamics.
"EVE" is even weirder, and at nine minutes it's by far the lengthiest piece here. This song puts us inside the mind of a seemingly well-off single mother who has become so lonely that she spends her evenings building a fake companion in the basement, after the kids have gone to sleep. Musically, it may privilege "psychodrama" at the expense of memorable melodic or rhythmic elements, and it's not one of my favorites. Maybe Vince's "sound design" went a tad off the rails here, but it's still an engrossing listen.
Say So gets easier to swallow after that. "The Things You Love" is a favorite, beginning and ending with an anthemic wordless choral melody, bookending a lovely and quiet tune that slowly builds back to the climax at the end. "Nakami" is another gentle tune, this one defined by a memorable guitar motif. "Commercial" adds a bit of humor, with a group-chanted chorus that seems to be a comment on commercialism. "Hands Up" begins with the loveliest vocal melody since the beginning of the album in another quiet segment, before suddenly turning into a straight-up pop tune with a sing-along chorus ironically praising life consumed by our electronic devices and online lives. "Good Girl" ends the album on a somber but poignant note, with more commentary on society's demeaning and unfair attitudes towards women.
Bent Knee are a lot of things at once, and I've found myself having to take breaks between immersions in their music. Partly because the intensity and excitement of their sound gets me "binging" on them for a while (both this album and the earlier Shiny Eyed Babies have gotten the most spins), before ultimately getting emotionally exhausted. It had been a few years since last my last listen to Say So when I undertook this review, and I had nearly forgotten what a rollercoaster ride it is.
Dan:
There are many previously unfamiliar albums included in our blog that I enjoyed getting to know. Say So is not one of them. As Steve points out, listening to Bent Knee is an intense and exhausting listening experience. With few exceptions, the most interesting moments for me are drowned in the arrangements that consistently add distorted, over-the-top dramatic effects. While that is obviously a modern style of performance, similar to the hip-hop songs I tried to understand, I can't help but wish for a cleaner, more straightforward voice and instrumental balance.
That said, I appreciate Bent Knee's choice of subject matter for their songs. Most make me uncomfortable because they're intentionally disturbing and even perverse. Building a robot lover in your basement, fantasizing about your therapist, and loving only dead things aren't scenarios I usually find in any kind of music. But that doesn't mean that they should be suppressed. Indeed, I take the whole point of Say So as a venture to express the uncomfortable thoughts and difficult situations experienced by (mostly) younger women.
It would be unfair to judge Say So as overstated anguish because that is their point. They've won the adoration of a dedicated following. Nonetheless, the album doesn't work for me, not because I shy away from discord but because the message contains so little nuance. I think that's what makes it exhausting, which again may be the band's whole point.
To its credit, Say So draws attention to emotions long neglected and rarely expressed. That's a worthy aim of many forms of art, including progressive rock. Add to that the impressive range of expression deployed by Courtney Swain (who sounds a little like Grace Slick in places), and you have an album that needs to be heard.
