Everlasting love

There’s not that much room at the chill-out inn these days, what with Lemon Jelly taking up the whole top floor, Manitoba, Lacklustre and Kreidler in the lobby and Blue States and Groove Armada overstaying their welcome. Well guess what, kids? It’s time to build a new penthouse, ’cos Bent are checking in!

In reality, the reason for hotpress’ excitement is that Bent – aka Simon Mills and Nail Tolliday – have delivered a sophomore album, The Everlasting Blink, that should see them crowned as leaders of the blue-school.

It wasn’t always going to be that way. After the well-received but slightly one-dimensional debut Programmed To Love, there were two possibilities for Bent: 1) Ending up with the ‘wholesale sample/not much talent’ lot and being just that bit too formulaic to be any good, or 2) Delivering something to be fucking proud of. So no pressure at all then, Simon?

“Well, the first album is quite nerve-wracking,” he says, “but not as much as the second! There was definitely pressure, the idea of wanting to move on, pressure to want to write something else more commercial, but not in the horrible sense. Something that’s got an accessibility to it, and a pop sensibility to it.”

That’s all well and good, but the first single from The Everlasting Blink, ‘Beautiful Otherness’ – a slice of polished saccharin chill-out produced by Stephen Hague and featuring The Beloved’s Jon Marsh – didn’t bode well for the album. But it seems critics were not alone in their distaste at the choice.

“I think Stephen will kill me for saying this,” says Simon hesitantly, “but the version that was mixed by him and then released sort of lost something of the original that we mixed. It was just too soundscapey… the original has a lot more attitude”

Which is something The Everlasting Blink has in spades. Well, okay, in the climate of the new rock revolution or whatever it’s called, it may sound a mite incongruous, but remember kids, not everyone likes wearing tight trousers and pretending they were into AC/DC and the Zep back in the day. It’s not rocket science, but it improved Programmed To Love’s template by concentrating on songwriting, melody and use of those real instruments. And, of course – this is Bent, after all – humour.

Simon concurs. “When I first met Nail, I was a real serious music spod all the time. But we had such a laugh with each other… we used to laugh at the amount of seriously shit records we have. Humour is definitely important to our process. We don’t want to make comical records, but it’s nice to be lighthearted about things. A lot of people get repelled when they hear Hawaiian guitars, but I don’t think it’s just funny, I think it’s a really beautiful instrument. I think because there’s so many different elements to the music, people will find certain different bits more humorous than others because of their background or their tastes...”

So when you hear the pair have sampled David Essex and Billie Joe Spears (just two of the more accessible oddities), you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s done in an oh-so-obvious Fatboy-stylee. Not ‘round these parts son. The samples are there, but they sit well within the album’s overall aims.

“I think there’s only so many times you can tell someone a joke,” offers Simon. “You’ve got to think about what happens after that. See, the thing is we’ve both progressed as musicians as time has passed. I was a programmer and Nail has always been a bit of a try his hand at anything. And when we went out live, out studio was ripped out for a while. So the only thing I got to play was my piano at home, so that sort of increases your musical capability. You learn a bit more with a few hours practice each day!”

There seems to be a concerted effort to move away from the more random downbeat tracks into something approaching pop music on The Everlasting Blink. Agreed?

“Yeah... some of it was pressure from the record company… but a lot of it was us trying to push ourselves to make something different. My record collection consists of shit-loads of pop records… and I used to rebel against pop, but I think it’s one of the hardest things to do, to construct a good pop tune. I been drowning myself in Beach Boys and Motown... and it’s just so bloody happy, there’s a celebratory feel to them. And that’s sort of what we were aiming for.”