(2016) Bent Knee - Say So
Review:
Boston’s Bent Knee proudly occupy the grey area where baroque pop, rock, and the avant-garde meet, but even they are sometimes caught off guard by their intricately woven, surrealist stylings. The element of surprise and desire to fuse disparate sounds was felt throughout their sophomore record, 2014’s well-received Shiny Eyed Babies. It shines through even brighter on follow-up album Say So, released through new label home Cuneiform.
A press release dubs the forthcoming LP a “thrilling, aural roller-coaster ride with arrangements designed to make listeners throw their arms up in wild abandon.” Surveying Say So’s heady yet meta subject matter, it’s easy to see how such a varied sort of record could come about.
Along with “the emergence of personal demons, ” the new full-length sees Bent Knee digging into the abstract, specifically “looking at the bigger picture and figuring out where we as individuals stand, and how we carve out meaning in this giant universe,” according to violinist Chris Baum.
While complex, contrasting compositions might be in Bent Knee’s DNA, much of the “surprise” in Say So can likely also be attributed to the unconventional space in which it was recorded. “A friend of ours pointed us to an empty, unlocked, million-square foot industrial complex in Boston,” says frontwoman/keyboardist Courtney Swain. “It felt like zombies were going to jump out anytime. It was a foreboding locale and gave the session a distinctly dark vibe.”
Tracklist:
01 Black Tar Water.flac
02 Leak Water.flac
03 Counselor.flac
04 EVE.flac
05 Interlude.flac
06 The Things You Love.flac
07 Nakami.flac
08 Commercial.flac
09 Hands Up.flac
10 Good Girl.flac
Summary:
Country: USA
Genre: art rock, post-rock
Media Report:
Source : CD
Format : FLAC
Format/Info : Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : ~ 582-898 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
