Banks: Goddess

By Isaac Miranda • 21 Oct 2014 in Review

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EICASTIC
Maybe we just expected a little too much from Jillian Banks. To be fair, we still don’t think she’s overhyped or anything of that sort – there’s an undeniable rationale for the buzz around the 26-year-old face of the current trend of avant-garde pop, and it’s that she’s just that good at what she does. But the issue that we had with this album is that too much of it feels rehashed and a little too tired.

Fourteen tracks, crammed into just under an hour of listening time just reeks of standard pop maximisation. Her previous releases were short and sweet packages detailing the best of what she could do – they weren’t overbearing, or draggy, and the six songs from Fall Down and London that are in this album still feel like they flow together better than anything else that Goddess could offer, with the rest of the tracks seemingly hopping dissonantly to each other instead of being in smooth continuous flux.

The entire effort feels a little forced because of this very reason. She’s still a magnificent singer, there’s no doubt about that – if any of the tracks on this record were plucked out and thrown into her previous EPs, we would probably have fawned over them just like we did the first time her lush vocals graced our grateful ears. But put her songs vis-à-vis each other, and nothing seems special, and stands out like the initial tunes that she posted on SoundCloud did a couple of years ago.

And that’s why so much of this album is instantly forgettable – it’s filled with generic, homogenous pop tunes, veering dangerously close to sounding like the countless other Banks sound-alikes that surfaced after she broke through with little substance, except with chic names backing her up. We love Banks, but Goddess just doesn’t do it for us. It sounds like a weary best hits collection clumsily embellished with wispy fillers but for one or two new tracks. Decent, but nothing to shout about that hasn’t been said before.

LISTEN TO: ‘Beggin’ For Thread’
IF YOU LIKE THIS YOU’LL DIG: Aaliyah
RATING: 2.5

TRACKLIST
1. Alibi
2. Goddess
3. Waiting Game
4. Brain
5. This Is What It Feels Like
6. You Should Know Where I’m Coming From
7. Stick
8. Fuck Em Only We Know
9. Drowning
10. Beggin For Thread
11. Change
12. Someone New
13. Warm Water
14. Under The Table