Blue Bendy frontman Arthur Nolan: ‘I see a lot of myself in Kendall Roy’

Sign as much as Roisin O’Connor’s free weekly publication Now Hear This for the within observe on all issues music

Get our Now Hear This electronic mail at no cost

Blue Bendy would possibly’ve been simply one other post-punk band misplaced in a sea of distortion had been it not for his or her frontman’s “fickle” perspective to style. The six-piece’s wonderful debut album, So Medieval, is proof sufficient of this: it’s an bold file that revels in the push-and-pull of sound and concepts, and is brimming with bon mots.

Tortured centrepiece “The Day I Said You’d Died (He Lives)” gallops merrily alongside a frenetic guitar riff, punctuated with sunny, Vampire Weekend-style bursts and squelchy synths. Instead of taking up the snarling sprechgesang of bands like Shame or Black Midi, Arthur Nolan sings in a unusual, lopsided moan. It’s additionally, remarkably, a file that by no means feels cluttered, regardless of its profound cacophony of devices.

Blue Bendy rode in on the tail of the Brixton Windmill scene. Nolan, now 27, arrived in London from Scunthorpe in 2017; he and guitarist Joe Nash had been joined by Olivia Morgan on keys/synths, Harrison Charles and Oscar Tebbutt on guitar, and Nolan’s brother, Olly, on bass. In sure circles, they have already got a formidable dwell status, even when they clearly want a larger stage to mess around on. Every tune snakes round a unfastened melody, constructing and releasing rigidity, whereas Nolan sways forwards and backwards, trance-like.

“I was having a bit of an identity crisis when the band was first starting; the only constant was that we wanted to be a bit weird,” he tells me now. We’re talking at a pub in east London; it’s noon, and already a gaggle of City bros are huddled across the bar, 4 pints in. One of them cackles all of a sudden, slopping his beer onto the wood ground. Nolan grimaces. The moneyed confidence of their gilets and booming voices exists in stark distinction to Nolan who’s soft-spoken – and “so poor”, he laughs.

He and the remainder of the band aren’t used to luxurious. On tour, they sleep huddled on the ground of a good friend’s front room or on the most cost-effective hostel. Performing gigs final autumn with Brighton post-punks Squid, they managed to attain a evening at a Travelodge in Birmingham. “It was the best night’s sleep on the whole tour,” Nolan remembers wistfully, a faraway look in his eye. “We got a vegan wrap from McDonalds, got into bed, and watched Graham Norton. It was wicked.”

With his youthful options and silver-grey crop of hair, Nolan resembles a cherub gone via the wringer. Appropriate, given the themes of So Medieval, which delves into the binaries of good and evil, proper and mistaken, wealthy and poor. His evocative songwriting conjures Hieronymus Bosch’s visions of everlasting punishment, hellfire, and torture – impressed in half by his lapsed Catholic upbringing.

They’re discovering extra followers: Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos has praised the band’s “wonderful lyrical imagery”, evident on tracks akin to “Clean Is Core”, the place Nolan sardonically asks: “Is there any fun in this utopia?/ My inner monologue is being trolled/ But this Becks blue bacchanalia is a thrill to behold.”

Nolan’s prolonged household stay “very religious”, and so he incessantly finds himself at communions, christenings, and confirmations. “I found [church] quite boring as a kid, but I liked singing the hymns,” he says. “And I was always quite interested in the iconography in Catholicism, the bombast of it. I feel like a lot of things I’m saying are quite trivial – mixing these big Catholic pain statements then subverting it with me crying about a girl or something. It’s poking fun… but also trying to take it as seriously as I possibly can.”

Nolan appears a fan of a spot of self-flagellation. Several songs on the album had been impressed by his four-year relationship, which ended final yr. “A lot of it is quite autobiographical, or verbatim,” he says, referring to lyrics that sound like snatches of dialog. “I had to clear it with a couple of people.”

Enjoy limitless entry to 70 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music

Sign up now for a 30-day free trial

Sign up

Enjoy limitless entry to 70 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music

Sign up now for a 30-day free trial

Sign up

There had been, he says, some “traumatic incidents” that transpired in the direction of the top of the connection, the main points of which he gained’t get into proper now. “I was riddled with guilt, but also felt wronged,” he says. “Entitled but also feeling really s***.” They broke up across the identical time as the ultimate season of HBO’s Succession was coming to an finish. Nolan discovered himself fascinated by the tortured, pitiful character of Kendall Roy, who will get a point out on the skittery, brooding “I’m Sorry I Left Him to Bleed”. “I see a lot of myself in Kendall,” he says, including with a wry smile: “At least I’m honest about it.”

2023 was a heavy yr for Nolan. “I was behaving quite, well, medievally,” he says. “It was cathartic at the time.” Is he referring to his response to the break-up? “To one of the incidents, yeah,” he says, ensuring to remain as imprecise as potential. He had been working as an artwork technician at a native school in Scunthorpe when the connection ended, the identical yr he ended up attending “quite a few” funerals, after which “pretty much hit rock bottom”.

“It was about three months of chaos,” he says. “I had to quit the job and retreated up north for a while. I wasn’t speaking to anyone.” Including the band. He’d get the prepare to London on the weekend, do vocal takes, then return dwelling with out seeing anybody. “I remember this one time, I was hungover, and my stepdad dropped me off in London for a session,” he remembers. “I walked to the Wetherspoons on Holloway Road, got breakfast and a pint, and had a cry.” Then he went to the studio for a Sunday exorcism. “I was shaking, tired, upset,” he says.

You can hear it on the title observe, on which Nolan howls like a wounded animal. It definitely seems like he’d been crying – possibly he by no means stopped. “I think the song is better for it,” he says. “Not that you have to do that,” he provides swiftly. Did he discover closure by unleashing a lot onto the band’s debut? “I exorcised a lot of it,” he says, however Blue Bendy are already engaged on the follow-up, and he anticipates some of the themes on So Medieval will stick round.

For now, they’re heading again on the highway for his or her first headline tour. Nolan is gutted that their newest funding software was rejected. “We were hoping to stay in hotels this time, but it’s looking like it’ll be floors again,” he says. Nolan tries his greatest to place a romantic spin on it, however he and his bandmates are getting fed up: “I think everyone was looking forward to a Travelodge this time.” Judging by the standard of So Medieval, it gained’t be too lengthy earlier than these lavish goals turn out to be a actuality.

‘So Medieval’ is out now