SSION is Kansas City, Missouri freak-scene collective led by charismatic mastermind Cody Critcheloe. He founded SSION while at art school there-- his extracurricular credits include album art for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and music videos for the likes of Liars-- and the band communicates over a wide range of media: campy, trashy music videos that would make John Waters smile; elaborate stage shows involving garish sets and costumes; and the kind of attitude-heavy electro pop that would go over equally well at the gay disco as the queercore dive bar. The question then is how does this stuff hold up outside the disco, without the dance routines or the videos, on its own, as an album?
The answer on Bent is: unfortunately, only okay. The album's lead single, "Psy-Chic", is a delicious tease: just under three minutes of propulsive bass arpeggio, fluttering synths, and Critcheloe singing, in an airy and inviting voice, the kind of chorus that could loop on forever ("Sometimes I think about you everyday/ Some days I only think about…"). It even has a righteous Courtney Love appropriation ("I told you from the start…") delivered in a deadpan speaking voice then breaking into laughter with a playful "psych!" If there's not already an extended 12" dance mix of this track, it will be necessary to create one. If Bent's shortest song is also its best, then its runner-up is its longest, "Nothing Happens at Nite", which spaces Critcheloe's usually dense approach out over eight minutes, making for a kind of dubby, sun-rising house track that's more subtly moving than SSION's tightly wound pop numbers. More of this, please.
Elsewhere, Critcheloe's songs and productions are pleasant and utilitarian-- if any of these came on at the right moment on the right dance floor, you'd wanna dance-- but ultimately insubstantial, fizzing out of one's memory almost as soon as they're finished playing. Still, there are some nice touches: the funhouse bells and whistles of "Blonde With U", the Freestyle-by-way-of-Hercules and Love Affair "Luvvbazzar", the muted beatboxing of "Growin", the drippy snaps occasionally overwhelmed by oppressive drum pulse on "Feel Good (4-Evr)", the brightly upbeat "My Love Grows in the Dark". But nothing on Bent pops off the screen quite as vibrantly as "Psy-Chic" or with as much cool confidence as "Nothing Ever Happens at Nite".
Maybe it's unfair to judge Bent as a stand-alone object, as the point or the primary document of the SSION project rather than as merely one prong of many in a multimedia pincer attack. But taken on those terms, it leaves you longing for the discotheque. Maybe that's the point.
