Annika Bentley
With Leak, Blink, &Breath (Billy Likes)
by Marc Hirsh

originally published in Space City Rock, Fall 2002

Annika Bentley is my worst Fiona Apple nightmare come to stereophonic life. She is, let's not fool ourselves, a talented singer and piano player, and she is so profoundly adventurous as regards the ends to which she will deploy her gifts that all over With Leak, Blink, and Breath, she gets lost down a hundred blind alleyways following her impulses just to see where they will lead. Whereas Fiona ultimately knew where she was going, Bentley is so enamored with her own creative process that she fails to get anywhere in particular, or care.

The fundamental components at the sub-song level are themselves beyond reproach; Bentley's respectable piano skills place her somewhere amongst the Vanessa Carltons of the world (a comparison sure to mortify them both, for countless reasons), and her voice is a handsome and controlled alto. It's the additive use to which they are put that is frustrating and not just a little worrisome. If a mason were to do with the tools of his trade what Bentley does with hers, the finished product would be some fundamentally flawed and impractical structure (such as, I don't know, an unsupported upside-down pyramid with no entryway or windows to let people in or, as the case may be, out) that would get him pegged as insane no matter how lovely and clean the brickwork.

Okay, so she's probably not crazy, but the debits are many, to be sure. All over With Leak, Blink, and Breath, Bentley steadfastly refuses to provide anything resembling clarity. The music gets lost chasing the tails of ghosts. Her lyrics are utter, utter nonsense without the redeeming throughline of the utter, utter nonsense of the New Pornographers or the playfulness of the utter, utter nonsense of Guided By Voices. Bentley's vocals are so disconnected from what she's singing (not, as per the preceding, that it matters) that it's all the same if the words sound as though they are being wrenched from her or, as in "Duty of a Man at Wheel," ticking through a stepladder melody that ignores such linguistic conventions as syllable stress. Still, with little more than a hunch, I file away some faint hope that Bentley will eventually grow out of this phase of her development (hitting her twenties should be a good start) and quit being content to ride her muse like a bucking bronco, confusing the bruises that she sustains with scars, and scars with trophies.

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