Aah, this is a lovely thing. An ethereal serenity pervades Bent’s third and best album ‘Ariels’. Gone are the studio tricks and the gimmicks that threatened to overwhelm their song-writing on ‘Programmed To Love’ and ‘The Everlasting Blink’, replaced instead by mature craftsmanship and warm instrumentation. Where the first two albums showed promise, ‘Ariels’ finally delivers.
Although still veering towards the chill-out room, Bent’s duo, Simon Mills and Nail Tolliday, have suppressed further their club-based foundations and headed for an altogether higher karmic plain. Along the way they’ve curbed their impulse to distract, harnessed an oddly appropriate ‘70s carefree vibe and retained the wide-eyed innocence that has given their music a permanent charm. Such a change in musical priorities and emphasis could easily have rendered ‘Ariels’ bland and washed-out, but instead it has freed the group’s melodic sensibilities and allowed them to come vibrantly to the fore.
As ever the duo have chosen wisely with their vocalists whose contributions add significantly to ‘Ariels’ uniform quality. Rachel Foster’s jazz stylings complement current single ‘Coming Back’. The song begins with a mid-tempo dance beat and a melody line that touches Bowie’s version of ‘China Girl’. It’s a cracking start. She also appears on ‘Sing Me’, at first sounding uncannily like Tracy Thorn, but with a musical backdrop that could easily have been lifted from an Enya album. Trust me, in the context of the whole album this is not a bad thing!
Katty Heath has a country folkiness to her voice and it’s displayed beautifully on the acoustic track ‘Sunday 29th’, the ambient ‘As You Fall’ and the '70s M.O.R epic ‘Now I Must Remember’. Sian Evans provides a soul voice that lends a (surprisingly) subtle vibrancy to the housey ‘I Can’t Believe’ and the shimmering ‘Sunday Boy’. It’s a side to her delivery with which I was unfamiliar, having thought of her as being more in the soul diva mould from the singles she’s belted out for Kosheen. Finally, Steve Edwards takes whispered soul man duties on the irresistibly pop-tastic ‘Silent Life’, a track that musically could be Gilbert O’Sullivan for the 21st Century. At the risk of repeating myself: Trust me, in the context of the whole album this is not a bad thing!
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Bent, the instrumentalists, also have their moments in the spotlight. ‘On The Lake’ is an exceptional ambient piece, benefiting from B.J. Cole’s eloquent E-Bow and Pedal Steel. Similar in its effect to Eno/Lanois pieces on the ‘Apollo’ album, the track also contains the classical leanings of post ‘Blade Runner’ Vangelis. ‘Exercise 4’ is traditional Bent fare, containing their more customary tinkling keyboard sounds and the chord/bass sequences associated with down-tempo club-land.
Final track ‘The Waters Deep’ again treads familiar Bent territory: their compulsion to mutate and transform songs and take the listener on a musical ‘head’ journey. Previously such excursions have often been their downfall but as an outro to the album, this particular flight of fancy is appropriate and compelling.
Many of the other chill-out/downtempo exponents have rehashed their formula to death, over-complicated matters or have ditched their original sound altogether in pursuit of something completely different (e.g. Blue States). Bent have honed their skills to create an album that displays a previously untapped adeptness in melding synthetic sounds to real instrumentation; a successful musical marriage that truly raises their game and should inspire them for future releases.
On ‘Ariels’ Bent have kept faith in simple and affecting song-writing and have rewarded those who’ve stayed the course with a rich and multi-layered musical gift for both head and heart.
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