Banks 'Goddess' - Album Review

With the success of Lana Del Rey, it was inevitable the record industry would uncover further examples of crestfallen young women with breathy coos, an aversion to publicity and songs that feel simultaneously declamatory and withdrawn.
Is Los Angeles native Jillian Banks a kind of Del Rey Mark 2? Possibly – and yet her debut album is frequently so slickly seductive it doesn’t matter. For one thing, she deploys a musical toolbox far more rigorous than Del Rey’s – Goddess is a whirl of swooping beats, ominous bass fugues and gothic electronica evocative of The xx. As is the fashion, Banks’ singing is wispy and occasionally wayward: on ‘Waiting Game’ she sighs forlornly as a womping groove comes crashing down; the bustling, baroque ‘Brain’ sees her overshadowed by rat-tat-tat dubstep rhythms. Sadly in its closing stretches, the record slighty loses its way –  the clubby trappings are dispensed with and we are required to reckon with Banks’ thin voice and a tinkling piano. Subtlety, it transpires, is the last thing she should be shooting for. But this is not a bad start at all...
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