Release date: November 11, 2014 | Independent | Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Website
Experimental/progressive music tends to have certain attributes stuck to its image: cerebral, unemotional, technical – among other, often unfavorable, descriptors. Emotional resonance is often an afterthought in these realms. Not so with Bent Knee, especially their 2014 sophomore release Shiny Eyed Babies. Weapons-grade feels exist alongside absolutely spectacular songwriting on this record, and no element is explored to the detriment of the other.
Robert Miklos
Shiny Eyed Babies, is one of the greatest albums ever made – in the history of recorded music. There’s probably barely a couple of handfuls of other albums I can truly apply this to, without even a shred of doubt. Unfortunately for Bent Knee, they raised the bar too high, too early. I honestly am not sure they could ever one up this record, however, I don’t think it matters. If as an artist, or a group of artists, you managed to create anything at this level, it’s more than enough. If you somehow surpass such a level, never even mind more than once, that’s the mark of something otherworldly in the truest sense of the word.
I encountered Bent Knee sometime 8 or 9 years ago. I’m not sure how did I run across them, or even exactly which song it was first, but I distinctly remember it was something from Shiny Eyed Babies – and baby, it was love at first sight. I’ve since listened to it too many times to count, yet, whenever I listen back to it, even with such a resounding sentiment of familiarity behind, I still feel on certain successive listens that I’m either discovering something new in the mix, feeling something entirely new through a bit which is forever burned into my neural pathways, and so on and so forth.
As time passed, coming back again and again to Shiny Eyed Babies, I have to say that it wears it self with a grace and elegance of timelessness, which few records are able to pull off. I think that besides the obvious flair of the composition of the record, and the stunningly pristine and bombastic production, the lyrical layer of it all also helps the record stay young forever – I’ll touch on some of that progressively as I advance.
It still evades me as to how you arrive to an end result like this album, but I’m sure that, like in the case of Bent Knee, it can’t hurt to this bottom line that they are all Berklee College of Music graduates. Although, there are plenty of examples of musicians with exceptional musical education who haven’t done much of note with their technical prowess and advanced knowledge, so ultimately, it always boils down to the spirit of the people in the band.
Shiny Eyed Babies manages to cover a truly impressive sonic and emotional territory over its not at all modest, hour-long run. On my early listens I was tempted to call it merely a forward-thinking rock record, but it’s oh, so much more than that. Sure, the general direction, architecture, and delivery fall square into the rock template, there are a series of other elements (that’s an entire discussion on its own) which augment this framework in a way which offers us something that’s unimaginably larger and greater than the sum of its parts. Some would be tempted to say that adding synths, keys, and violin, to an already full-rounded rock line-up is too much, but not me. Granted I’m something of a ‘more is more’ type person, though it seems that Bent Knee also follow this credo to an extent, albeit with much more gusto than I ever could.
Believe me, though, the band manages, over the course of the record, to wring out so much out of their instruments, that it can genuinely feel like we have an orchestra on display, giving it their all. While the record itself is very neatly polished and presented, for all intents and purposes, as a veritable aural cornucopia, the delivery of these songs shines truest in the band’s live renditions, which you can check throughout this piece. They do not offer, on a strict listening level the most refined version of things, but they offer the rawest emotional display and the most authentic delivery overall.
One of the first live videos I’ve seen was the one for “Battle Creek”. I mean, that’s already my absolute favorite song ever from the band, but this live rendition literally boosts it with an exponentially larger dimensional resonance in the emotive plane. Sometimes I’ll straight just tear up listening to it, and, look, listen to it with the lyrics side by side and tell me it doesn’t tug at your heartstrings one way or another. That ending line closing out like a gentle whisp of wind after a torrent of wilderness with ‘I returned from the battle creek/But my heart did not make it/back with me‘ – the impact of that is one of the most intense things I have witnessed at an artistic level, due in no small part to the fact that it can easily serve as a metaphor for a lot of profoundly life-altering events and their outcomes.
Obviously, it’s not just “Battle Creek”, despite my unrelenting ardor, which kicks hard. I remember being absolutely blown away by “Sunshine” too. Even more so after I found out it’s a folk song (shout out to Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell for the original composition) turned lullaby of all things. Bent Knee took that and elevated it in a way that’s simply astonishing. It begins very much like a lullaby but it ends with an absolutely hair-raising, star-scattering finale, featuring also some of Courtney Swain’s most dramatic vocal deliveries. It’s just un-fucking-real. The overtly implied affection, longing, and heartache supplemented by the lyrics adroitly galvanizes the tune as well.
Then there’s the likes of “Skin”, “Way Too Long”, “Dry”, and “In God We Trust”, which run along a more dynamic sound, bringing in the mix even some catchy hooks for some sonic relatability and anchoring, really going for a type of feel where my eyes are wide as dinner plates in anticipation of the next moment. They’re definitely some the tracks which will turn a gig into a show. This makes perfect sense given that the underlying ideas/themes revolve around societal/political issues which, adapting to temporal context, have been with us since the dawn of time, one way or another. Their presentation is obviously a clear nod to our specific modern issues, yet they retain a character which allows them to be easily understood and matched across time and space.
On the other hand, on a more profound level, I feel that “Being Human” probably nails it home the most as an artistic statement. First of all, and I know you will not believe this and this will be totally unexpected, but it’s an incredibly good song, I swear. During the time when I really fell for this song, I was in a weird place (to say the least) and at first, I didn’t really go further than the music itself. Then I looked at the lyrics and as I was listening to the song, I caught myself yet again in tears. Let me just break off here to say that I feel it’s absolutely mind-blowing and incredible that a piece of music, literally just a sequence of waves in air moving, is able to move me not just to tears in one way, but in several ways running the gamut from worst to best – for the lack of a better wording. So, I was particularly caught off guard by the ‘You never liked the thought of being human anyway/Death is one more option to explore‘ line that rings throughout. At its absolute barest level, this existential struggle to just be, with all it may entail, in whatever frame or state, is primordial. This line always made me think about this type of stuff in depth, reaching out to all sorts of tenebrous depths and angelic highs. It’s really a ruminant spectacle in that sense, on a mental, emotional, and spiritual level.
I could go on and on and on, ad nauseam. However, I have to force myself to a halt here, because, let’s be real, there’s maybe a handful of others who share this degree of passion for this record and newcomers might just be totally scared off. I was tempted to say for the sake of brevity, but that ship has sailed several paragraphs ago. At any rate, Shiny Eyed Babies is a monumental album, showcasing a scintillating and spectacularly wide array of boons, which is worthy of your undivided attention.
In anticipation, as if, I’m aware that, of course, some of you may say that this is a highly overblown puff piece, or whatever, but do keep in mind that art is a highly subjective experience. Sure, while I do like to embellish and throw around phrasings made of dynamite, what you have went through above is my absolute personal truth – and absolutely nothing else. If anything out of what I said ignited your curiosity in any shape or form, go listen to Bent Knee. If you read a bit and listened to 10 seconds from the first video in the article, and just skipped to the end of it all for a conclusion, go listen to Bent Knee later when you have time – particularly Shiny Eyed Babies.
Jean Pierre Pallais
I distinctly remember a point in my music discovery journey in which I thought the absolute pinnacle of all music was the specific form of progressive metal in which you’re constantly being bombarded with instrumental wankery- galore and a lack of consistent time signatures (we’ve all been there). In hindsight, I must have been absolutely insufferable to talk about music with at the time because I somehow convinced myself that the extremely unnecessary overcomplexity was the end-all, be-all when it comes to music being good or not. I’d hear literally any song on the radio and my eyes would roll deep into the back of my head because there wasn’t a four-minute long section of mind-numbing eight-string guitar sweeps. Oh my sweet summer child, you never could’ve been so naïve.
I had locked in on the mindset that progressive (metal) music is purely progressive because of 10+ minute-long songs, never ending instrumental shredfests that not a single soul asked for, and constantly ‘evolving’ time signature patterns just for the sake of being sophisticated and thus allegedly superior. I so desperately wanted to be part of the self-identified ‘iNteLliGenT pErSoN cLuB’ and somehow I deludedly saw this as my ticket in. Luckily for me, my inner drive to keep finding new-to-me music (on top of simply maturing) shook me out of this pretty quickly.
I eventually found myself branching out towards different styles of music and ended up discovering Bent Knee through the track “Sunshine”. Admittedly this band isn’t that far removed from the prog metal/rock umbrella, yet they would be the first domino that started to change how I perceived music. I immediately latched to this particular track on first listen because a) it is an undeniably stellar piece of music and b) it is a masterful reinterpretation of a lullaby that was sung to me throughout my childhood, providing a heavy dose of nostalgia yet changing things up so drastically that it is basically its own song in how creatively different it is.
The lyrics to the “You Are My Sunshine” lullaby have positive emotions associated with it, but in how Bent Knee frame their original lyrics that build up to those of the lullaby, it changes the narrative of the harmless tune entirely in a manner that is depressive as all hell. It tells a tale of emotional turmoil following a failed relationship, guiding the song towards a musical explosion directly reflective of what one would experience under such circumstances. The final moments of that song in particular resemble that of a psychotic break drenched in denial due to such trauma; being able to portray that in music is a feat all in itself. Anyways, after hearing “Sunshine”, the rest was history as the rest of the album is also a slam dunk and I craved more music like this and not mindless musical masturbation.
I constantly bounce back and forth between favorite tracks on Shiny Eyed Babies, from “Sunshine” to “In God We Trust”, “Battle Creek”, and “Being Human”. Of these tracks (with exception of “Battle Creek”), they all lead up to a massive closing crescendo and I have a major soft spot for that. You’ll find nothing but a constant compositional push-and-pull, creating so much tension and intrigue. Bent Knee opened my eyes to how much you can create from so ‘little’, not needing to rely on cheap displays of gratuitous showmanship but rather genuine emotion and subtle complexity through the art of restraint. These tracks along with the rest on the record are all so organic in how they’re arranged and evolve, never feeling tethered to a formula but moving forward in whatever way feels the most natural for a given song. Shiny Eyed Babies is music in its truest, most natural form. It breathes right through you.
Despite this not being an album that accompanied me through my adolescence (only because it was released afterwards), I feel a deep connection to it as if it was something that I’ve known for much longer than I actually have. The lyrical themes touch on universal human emotions as if they’re being experienced for the very first time, like young love, intrusive thoughts, and death just to name a few, collectively reminding me of my first relationship and going through adolescence in general. Additionally, the music itself is quirky in how it is intentionally awkward at times (as we all were in our adolescence, just not intentionally…), but not enough to render the music itself as immature or lacking any depth, quite the contrary.
The instrumentation and chemistry the band possesses is matched. It’s an absolute joy listening to every string pluck or piano arpeggio, every drum fill, every guitar/bass lick, and noticing all the changes in vocal inflections you don’t passively catch. Each member is so expressive in their performance that it is just all so raw and authentic. You feel as if you’re in the studio with the band as they record a live session video for the whole album. It is such a travesty that Ben and Jess ended up parting ways with the band and I’m sad to admit that I understand why. The band deserves so much more success than they actually ended up getting that it doesn’t make sense to put all your marbles in something with little return for as long as they did; even if they did love it every step of the way.
Shiny Eyed Babies is one of those special albums that provides a completely different experience if you sit down and actively listen to the record as opposed to passive/background listening. I know with our lives becoming increasingly more complicated and our time stretched thinner, it’s hard to dedicate the time and focus to sit down and just listen, but this record is one that fully warrants your undivided attention. When life gets tough, I know Bent Knee will swoop in to my rescue as this record leaves me shiny eyed every damn time.
