Review: Bly De Blyant - Hindsight Bias

“Rock music” is such a loose term, and that’s a fantastic thing. Hindsight Bias borrows rock’s propulsion and unambiguity – though intricate and decorative, the beats here lay the road ahead like a steel railway line – and uses its throbs of energy to power the more melodious textures that splash upon and around the rhythmic lines, gathering into resonant and familiar chord changes and then spilling outward as impulsive monologues of whatever: flashbacks to tobacco taste and cocktails at dimmed-light jazz bar, funky stomps and vibrant disco light pulsations, the jaunty invasion of loose-limbed banjo strums, fidgety pockets of prog squawking dissonant expletives.

It’s a warm release; not only for the fluid and courteous communication between the three musicians, but for the vibrations that emanate from the piping glow of amplifier valves, each speaker gently resonating the grill of the other. Such an attention to space and production places me right in the midst of the knowing smiles and synthesiser lights, watching the walls fall down as the velvet-curtained club of “Laura” (an elasticated bass hook that offers up a good half-hour’s of jamming potential, from which the band modestly claim a punchy three minutes) turns into the vast and wayward space of the title track, seemingly recorded in a corner café that yawns outward into a pristine, high-ceiling shopping centre: guitars and organs humming softly in the midst of lunchtime chatter and plates chinking on wooden tables.