BANKS keeps brooding, keeps brooding love.
The LA-based singer-songstress — who I’ve recently decided is the beautiful love child of Fiona Apple, Portishead and The Weeknd — has been churning out song after song of deliciously downtempo, broken-hearted brooding over the past year: From “Before I Ever Met You” to “Waiting Game” to “This Is What It Feels Like” and the rest of her genius LONDON EP.
Now, there’s another slice of late night melancholy to set the mood just right in preparation of her highly anticipated 2014 debut LP. It’s called “Brain,” and it was crafted alongside LA producer, Shlohmo.
Not only is this one of BANKS’ most sophisticated productions yet, but it’s also pure lyrical gold: “I can see you struggling/Boy, don’t hurt your brain/Thinking what you’re gonna say/’Cause everything’s a game/Always trying to calculate/Trying to look smart, but not too smart to threaten anything they say,” she sagely advises.
The atmospheric electronica and BANKS’ sinister-sounding chants (“ooo-ah-ah-ah-yah“) are already enough to make the song a total win, but it’s when we reach that 2 minute mark — as BANKS’ just breaks and starts to HOWL and tremble with all her might — that the song buries itself deeper still into your brain.
Where eloquence fails, expletives remain: It’s just so FUCKING good.
The ‘LONDON EP’ was released on September 10. (iTunes)
