Bending Backwards’ Debut Gives a Copenhagen Duo a New Voice

Bending Backwards’ debut album is eight songs about loving and missing people, at least according to the three Copenhagen musicians who made it. The title, still and quiet brother are you still and quiet, suggests a record that keeps to itself. The music does not. Out on Pink Cotton Candy Records, it opens with “Bend You Out of Shape,” where guitarist Halfdan Stefansson’s riffs and drummer Johannes Østlund Jacobsen’s percussion lock together into something closer to a chase than a groove, then collapses straight into “Endless Hours.”

What the album really documents is a band changing shape. Bending Backwards were a duo working in spontaneous noise-rock until 2023, when songwriter and singer Frederik Blæsild Vuust joined and gave the material a center. His baritone does much of that work: low, deliberate, and exposed enough that the quiet passages carry as much weight as the loud ones.

The range is wide without sounding scattered. “You Are My Love” uses space and humming strings. “Crushing Soft