BANKS performing at Trinity in Bristol on Thursday night
Posted on: 18 Mar 2014She only started performing live in 2012 but now she is one of Katy Perry’s favourite artists.
Her name is BANKS and her style has been defined as dark R&B, even if she declared she started loving music listening Tracy Chapman in her mother’s car, when she was just a baby.
This talented - and even beautiful - girl born in Los Angeles will be making her live return to the UK for a debut headline tour with a gig at Bristol's Trinity Centre on Thursday 20 March 2014.
BANKS (whose complete name is Jillian Banks) is a self-taught pianist influenced by singers like Fiona Apple, Brandy and Lauryn Hill. She started writing songs at 15, when she received a keyboard as gift from a friend to help her through her parent’s divorce: “I didn’t know how to express what I was feeling or who to talk to”, she admits now, ten years later. All we know is that this deep sorrow passed throughout her mild and in the same time sensual voice, giving birth to very original songs like Before I ever met you, Warm Water, and Waiting Game, which was also featured in the 2013 Victoria’s Secret holiday commercial. BANKS loves to mix electronic effects to classical pop influences and even blurry evocation to the 90’s best trip hop. Some of her melodies remind me of Lana del Rey’s first album Born to Die and even those from the latest Muse’s production.
The favourite lyric’s topic is the anguished love, although this young songwriter is able to speaks about feelings considering them from an ironic prospective too. As she declared many times, expressing her fear and loneliness through music helped her cope, and now she wants fans to hear her lyrics and feel they’re not alone.
After being chosen for Victoria’s Secret spot and get in touch with the producers Jamie Woon and Lil Silva, the songwriter published London Ep (the title owing to the city it was written and recorded in) and it has been hotly tipped by the BBC Sound of 2014, MTV, Spotify, Shazam and UK Blog Sound of 2014. Before London, she had previously released a first EP on the Iamsound Records/Good Years Recording Labels, titled Fall Over, included the same name single and Before I Ever Met you.
Listening to some of her works, This is what it feels like and Brain, we get why she herself defines her sound “dark bluish black with smoke and chants and fire and heart”.
One of the most unusual, nice and intriguing aspects of BANKS personality is her relationship with fans and her bad “connection” with social networks. Here’s what she writes in the information page of her Facebook profile: “Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have never really been my thing. So my manager is going to run the Social Media stuff. If you ever want to talk, call me”.
Pretty off-the-record for a girl recently acclaimed as “The next big name in pop”.