Review Summary: West coast Electronic singer Banks is here to stay
Just in case you are new to Banks, her previous EP London contained perfect electronic beats with a set of emotive lyrics that expose the fragility and courage she has converted into her melodies. One thing for sure is Banks has got something to shout about and it was a privilege for me to have a chance to hear her talent shine through.
This album brings a combination of the same heartfelt lyrics and painfully catchy hooks heard on ep ‘London’ against moody pianos and synths tied to glitchy fast-paced drum loops. The amount of talent recording producers Lil Silva, SOHN and Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs (all great solo acts in themselves) have put into creating a unique and brilliant album – the perfect soundtrack for her modern audience – will thrive in the digitally saturated world post-Iphone. All four tracks from London are included on here and those four tracks alongside the title track, Beggin for Thread and Drowing would be argued as the seven strongest songs of her career so far.
The album opens accordingly with Alibi which is a confession in many ways – a plea for her lover to give some indicator towards her innocence in the painful stages of a emotionally volatile relationship. That starts to open up a path for the listener to delve into her work with the anticipation of hearing what is next as each layer of guilt appears freshly with each new word she sings. Alibi closes with repeated line ‘Give me one reason’. As she appears to be finished hurling punches towards her own mistakes previously, she now focuses her attention on ripping into her partners lack of attention as her emotions switch from regret to anger during Goddess. Banks can play the diva well during this part of the album but her ego beings to disintegrate as we go into Waiting Game.
The song that I wanted to come back and listen to over and over was Brain which contains some of the most reflective and personal lyrics aimed towards the one that welded the knife that stabbed deep into her broken heart. This song is powerful and appropriate as we can all related to at least one person in our lives who has chosen to detach themselves from their emotion during times of grief and distress and appears cold and calculating on the outside. She has responded by successfully bordering her own songs in the realm of emotion and logic with such conviction that I was at this point eager to hear more about her unique world-view.
The majority of the album is produced with equal lengths of electronic power but we also are given a taste of acoustic flavor in the middle where you will stop and hear parts of Banks influenced not only by modern scenes but also the 60s and 70s folk of a previous decade that she may have looked up to such as Joni Mitchell – just as essential at helping to reassure much of us who were reaching adolescence and felt troubled by what was in store.
Her stripped back approach in other tunes has been mostly perfected in outstanding diverse folktronica such as the more slow and sultry track ‘You Should Know..’ where she asks us to decide whether she may be ‘just too crazy to love’. Another highlight moment is hearing of her desire to find home plus an outstanding vocal crescendo heard on ‘Under the Table’ with ‘My heart could be yours, won’t you make it your home’.
Hopefully this album is only the start as I find myself craving a new fix of what is next and I’m confident soon I will be hearing her lyrical ability soar even higher. The album is a great listen for UK and US fans both, as she herself is a self-confessed fan of Post-Dubstep super-producer, and innovator Burial (see; Untrue). I hope that based on this album alone her next releases may achieve the same level of recognition as Mariah Carey did in the 90s as she stands tall in a new era of great RnB singers.
