Just like Joseph from the Bible (and the very cover of this album), Bent Knee’s You Know What They Mean has a coat of many colors. It may be called art rock, but truly, this is the offspring of the progressive greats from the ’70s. Thankfully, it doesn’t regress into Genesis/Yes symphonic clones. And, while it is eardrum dinning at times, it is a universe away from cliched prog metal.
If anything, You Know What They Mean sings with the ethos of King Crimson, which Bill Bruford once described as, “a kind of fantastic musical sparring match.”
But let’s start with the obvious: Courtney Swan’s voice. It’s the very audible equivalent of the Doors’ album title Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine. What a voice! I hear Kate Bush, Annie Haslam, Dagmar Krause, Janis Joplin, Kate Pierson, Cindy Wilson and, oddly enough, Geddy Lee. Yeah, her voice is just weird gold.
The album begins with the offhand live dialogue from (I assume) Lansing, which welcomes the audience. Then “Bone Rage” really welcomes any audience with Crimson metal-guitar chords without a sympathy card. The song vibrates with black-hole danger. But this is music with melodic melee, some screeches, an incessant engine room, moments of intense beauty, and a guitar that rips a Dave Davies’ razor blade across Spinal Tap’s eleven-grade amps.
Then, like a salvation out of the maelstrom, Bent Knee’s “Give Us the Gold” is a miracle of, quite simply, brilliant rock ‘n’ roll (with a catchy tough chorus). This one cuts puzzle pieces just to make everything fit. There’s no respite, because “Hold Me In” ups the cerebral ante. The tune blows with tempest winds, and then quells its fury into a lovely vocal interlude, before exploding with the drama of a slow grenade.
Yes, this is music of progressive-rock drama. “Egg Replacer” is sweet – that is, until the guitars get hard boiled and loud. And yes, this is a record of juxtaposition. The darkness of the moon collides, over and over again, with the warm sun. “Cradle of Rocks” pulses nuclear fusion. And then, there’s a moment of stretched beauty that morphs into (I think) another live dialogue called “Lovell.” It’s all very human.
But (oh my!) Bent Knee’s “Lovemenot” is dense stuff that’s just a black wall of intense post rock swirling sound that somehow levitates itself with some sort of rock ‘n’ roll redemption.
Then, “Bird Song” is soft, lovely, and thankfully allows for an exhale.
By the way, it’s important to mention that there are no multi-part epics here. Only a few songs crack the five-minute mark; although, given the flow of You Know What They Mean, many of the tunes sort of blink into each other.
But this a rock record, and “Catch Light” is “fantastic” as Bill Bruford’s “magical sparring match.” And “Garbage Shark” toys with a few guitar chords; Courtney Swan’s vocals tug the heavens, and the music walks through several fun house mirrors, until the pulsar pulse drives the song into a glorious post-rock finale.
Then, “Golden Hour” hovers with unexplained beauty that slips into (heaven forbid) yet another bone fide catchy tune. The sonic soar of the band Renaissance (circa Turn of the Cards) comes to mind. You Know What They Mean ends with “It Happens,” which is weird and oddly languid with an echo of Tony Banks’s cleverly dissonant keyboard work. That frames a very climactic and haunted vinyl run-off progressive rock adieu.
So, be patient with this record. Listen and then listen many times more. It rocks and it spins. It has yin and it has tons of yang. It frees a few Larks’ Tongues that were stuck in Aspic. You Know What They Mean refuses to bow to the progressive greats of the past. The Boston-based Bent Knee cuts its own furrowed vinyl grooves that are odd, dissonant, cosmic, divine, quite beautiful – and then, everything else, yeah, everything else that sings in between all the backbeat of a pretty nice rock ‘n’ roll tune.
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