Having emerged at the fag end of the 90s as an off-kilter production duo – all junk shop samples, wonky tracks and an infectious bonhomie – the Nottingham-based duo Bent are no strangers to stumbling out on the same breath as those jolly old spangly Jelly headz and those garlic-munching, ether producing chillsters, Air. In fact we’re now four albums into Bent’s career and we’re still drawing the same comparisons. Not because we’re lazy, but because these are da boyz and that is wat dey do. Electronica, house, dance, ambient, synth-pop, sample pop, jumble pop – there’s certainly no shortage of things to call it and yet still it refuses to conform persuasively to any one thing in particular. Not that it should bother Nail Tolliday and Simon Mills who continue to dodge mainstream success with the kind of determination traditionally reserved for people who have bullets to avoid. ‘The Everlasting Blink’ was a patchwork of parenthesis, a richly enjoyable club romp of candy-flavoured melodies, nod-and-wink-references and nerdishly surreal humour. And so is this, but there’s a difference. Whereas that album featured such camp easy-listening icons as Billie Jo Spears, Lena Martell and David Essex, this one features the more blokishly groomed intent of one Simon Lord, former frontman of the much missed, and hugely under-rated, psychedelic popsters Simian (they had that song “La Breeze“ from the Peugeot 1007 commercial, remember?). And what he’s given it all, quite simply, is a point. Some certainty. Some direction. Yes, the fizzy, the camp and the glittery still manage to please and confuse in equal measures (‘Stay Out All Night’, ‘Wendy Darling’, ‘Leavin Me’) and instrumentals like ‘Breakfast At 80,000 Ft’, ‘Wendy Darlings’ and ‘As Seen From Space’ still seem to pass for anyone from Royskopp to Joe Meek, but it’s the tracks with Lord that provide the glue and stops it sliding into the usual puzzling yet pleasant trifle of sweet irrelevance. ‘To Be Loved’, ‘Stay Out All Night’, ‘Tired Of The Show’, ‘The Handbrake’ and ‘After All The Love’ provide the kind of purposeful narration of someone who knows what they’re doing. It’s a bit like finding yourself at a Gay disco after no end of subtext and innuendo and mincing loud-mouth divas and stumbling into a fella who has a bit of a story to tell, a sharp word to say on the footie and is capable of staying upright long after his first half-shandy.
It’s still Bent, of course, just not AS bent.