Blue Bendy frontman Arthur Nolan: ‘I see a lot of myself in Kendall Roy’
Blue Bendy might’ve been just another post-punk band lost in a sea of distortion were it not for their frontman’s “fickle” attitude to genre. The six-piece’s excellent debut album, So Medieval, is evidence enough of this: it’s an ambitious record that revels in the push-and-pull of sound and ideas, and is brimming with bon mots.
Tortured centrepiece “The Day I Said You’d Died (He Lives)” gallops merrily along a frenetic guitar riff, punctuated with sunny, Vampire Weekend-style bursts and squelchy synths. Instead of taking on the snarling of bands like Shame or Black MidiArthur Nolan sings in a strange, lopsided moan. It’s also, remarkably, a record that never feels cluttered, despite its profound cacophony of instruments.
