Seldom do I sit down with a member of the press and struggle to pull away from the conversation nearly three hours later. An enormous THANK YOU to Steve Smith and The Boston Globe for taking the time for this interview, and to Anil Prasad and Stephen Humphries for the introduction. In the article, published online yesterday and in print today, Bent Knee discusses band origins, the creative process, and our upcoming record, "Say So", which comes out in May on Cuneiform Records.
Via The Boston Globe:
With heady buzz and a new LP, Bent Knee bids for the big time
Early in December, a clutch of journalists and curiosity seekers from Boston and beyond arrived at the Space, a cozy gallery and concert venue tucked away on a quiet street in Jamaica Plain, to witness a remarkable sight. Bent Knee, a young local sextet, had packed the room on a frigid Saturday night. A disparate mix of friends and devotees, young and old, gathered not just to hear the group’s newly completed third LP played from start to finish, but also to lend their voices to a few climactic choruses. Since the concert was being filmed for potential release, the crowd obligingly sat on the floor.
Said album, “Say So,” resoundingly demonstrated the increasing refinement and confidence of a group that doesn’t quite fit any conventional pigeonhole. Bent Knee’s emphatic crunch and knack for complexity, mixed with lively wit, have aligned it loosely with that most marginalized of genres, progressive rock. Live, the band projects visceral glee, exactingly harmonized and wholly infectious.
Courtney Swain, Bent Knee’s dramatically potent lead vocalist and pianist, delivers emphatic, enigmatic lyrics in a manner that can evoke Björk, Alanis Morissette, or Joanna Newsom while sounding like no one but herself. Vince Welch, the sound designer who shapes and sculpts the group’s performances onstage and in the studio, adds still more shades to an expansive palette: electronica, classic pop, heavy metal, and hip-hop all figure into Bent Knee’s matrix somewhere.
Exactly one month after the show, five band members — Swain, Welch, guitarist Ben Levin, violinist Chris Baum, and bassist Jessica Kion — huddled around a table in a Newbury Street cafe for an interview. Drummer Gavin Wallace-Ailsworth had been done in by travel, his bandmates compensating with tangled narrative threads and oversize ebullience.
They’ve got plenty to be excited about. Thanks in part to Anil Prasad, purveyor of the influential progressive-music webzine Innerviews (www.innerviews.org), word about Bent Knee has spread well beyond its supportive Boston home base. Having self-released two albums and an EP, the band will issue “Say So” on the venerated US indie Cuneiform Records in May. And while Bent Knee still books its own shows stateside, it recently joined Paperclip Agency — whose roster includes Afrika Bambaataa, Shonen Knife, and Television — to coordinate European touring.
You can read the full article at https://goo.gl/Q2ipQa
More on Bent Knee at http://bentkneemusic.com
