Blue Bendy: the south London post-punk pop band who fried Wire’s brains | Music

From London, England
Really helpful if you happen to like Ought, Broadcast, Squid
Up subsequent Ending up their debut album, hopefully due 2023

Blue Flexible singer Arthur Nolan is discussing the band’s early days. “Earlier than post-punk acquired so torpid and landfill we had been making an attempt to be like Wire,” he says. “We needed to do stuff like them on the weirder facet of guitar music. Pop was a unclean phrase on the time.”

In 2017, Nolan arrived within the capital from Scunthorpe with guitarist Joe Nash “on the tail finish of that complete Fats White Household and Windmill Brixton scene” and shaped Blue Flexible. Initially they adopted developments and embraced punkier music however with the addition of Olivia Morgan on synth, solidifying them as a six-piece together with Sam Wilson, Harrison Charles and Oscar Tebbutt, they advanced to lock right into a extra idiosyncratic and particular person groove. “We didn’t wish to be a south London post-punk band,” says Nolan. “We needed to be a pop band. We simply lacked the idea to go our personal means within the early days.”

Blue Flexible: Clear Is Core – video

They gigged with the likes of Squid, Scalping and Omni they usually caught the ear of producer Margo Broom (Goat Lady, Huge Joanie) who started to work with them. Very similar to their friends Black Nation, New Highway, they had been eager to shake off the grotty post-punk associations of the south London scene and expanded their sound, incorporating flutes over rhythmic bursts of acoustic guitar and buzzing synths.

Launched in 2022, the Bike EP is an eclectic mixture of artwork rock and avant pop, loaded with disjointed compositions and wonky melodies. Wire’s Colin Newman even performed a observe on his radio present. “After 20 seconds of silence, he mentioned: ‘It’s going to take me about 24 hours to get my head round that,’” Nash remembers.

“We fried his mind,” Nolan provides. “So perhaps we’re doing one thing proper.”

They’re discovering extra followers: Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos has praised the band’s “fantastic lyrical imagery”, evident on tracks resembling Clear Is Core, the place Nolan sardonically asks: “Is there any enjoyable on this utopia? / My inside monologue is being trolled / However this Becks blue bacchanalia is a thrill to behold.”

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“That could be a mission assertion if you happen to take it with the pinch of salt that’s supposed,” says Nolan. “It’s tongue in cheek about purity being lifeless. That’s us. We’re not making any type of pure assertion, we’re a giant combine.” There aren’t any boundaries as they transfer ahead. “We could do orchestral baroque pop, a Tender Buttons rip-off observe after which a fucking industrial rock tune,” says Nolan. “We wish to do every part.”

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