Last month, Ben Seretan released “New Air,” the lead single from his forthcoming album Allora, and it’s already one of our favorite songs of the year. So, it’s no surprise that “Bend,” the latest offering from the impending seven-track marvel, is just as great. Seretan is chameleonic, never afraid to shape-shift between genres—especially indie rock and instrumental noise.
The New Yorker never rests for a second, but “Bend” is much less of sensory overload than “New Air”—instead arriving like a textbook guitar cut with chords that flirt with the kind of cowboy bravado you might not expect from an East Coaster. And yet, all of it works and all of it soars. Seretan’s lyricism is minimal, registering like a poetry reading that also happens to have a colossal, crooning quake of rock ‘n’ roll thundering beneath it. “Bending with the weight of it, what I want could fill the world up,” Seretan sings out. “I will bend, not break.”
