BEHIND THE SOUND: Banks Arcade - A Muse

Kiwi-born, Melbourne-based rock outfit Banks Arcade returns with their latest release, A Muse. An extension of the band’s previous EP, Death 2, which developed the band’s sound and tenacity in heavier styles, A Muse sees these Kiwi transplants shed their skin into the refined alternative/rock band they were born to be.

The EP’s leading track, ‘Heartstop‘ offers an explosive blend of electronic rock grooves and seering hooks and acts as the main catalyst for A Muse. It sees Banks Arcade sonically transition into a band not afraid of musical experimentation and just playing with styles that work to their strengths.

Alongside this single, we also found ourselves bopping our heads to ‘Faded AF‘. This track delivered an edgy blend of emo-pop melodies that unfolded into a blistering rock anthem of raw emotion. To help uncover the rest of this release though, vocalist Joshua O’Donnell took us on an emotional deep-dive behind A Muse.

‘Alive’

Alive started when I was freestyling, I pretty much played the whole first minute and a half in one go. I wrote the first line of the song in that moment, and James [Feekes – Drums] recorded the whole thing. From there, we built the song around that recording, and I feel like this song really encapsulates the energy of this band. It darts all over the place and it’s asking all of these questions, not really giving any answers. It’s exploring all of this self-doubt and angst. And then at the end it says, “I just want to be alive” and resolves itself in that.

Also, another fun fact about this song for anyone who is hoping to see it live in the future: all of the guys in the band are always making little jokes out of my lyrics and they try and say things enough so that I’ll mess up the words ever so slightly. And with this song, they’ve done it so much for so long now that I actually don’t know when I’m doing it. It’ll be fine, but I actually don’t know what the lyrics are at any given time because at some points I think it’s, “does it make you feel alive”. And then other times I’ll think it’s, “I just want to be alive”. My bandmates always say it so differently to me, they’ve actually messed up my brain with it. So, whoever comes to a show needs to learn the lyrics so that I can remember what they are!

‘Heartstop’

I honestly think that Heartstop is just about a “fuck it” moment where you’re really sad about something. And then you’re just like, “you know what? I’m just going to go have a good time”. That is really what it is. And it is also about how much I love playing music and how much I love it when you’ve got a room going and everything’s working. There’s so much about this whole journey that I dislike, but that is the shit that I love. I think Heartstop captures that feeling pretty well.

‘Faded AF’

This whole EP is very much exploring two sides, it’s like a conversation with yourself and going back and forth about things, and not being able to make up your mind, having this doubt and anxiety and indecisiveness. Faded AF is really about that. It was written about a period during lockdown where I was drinking a lot and I was taking drugs and just being in this total state. And it wasn’t even in a bad way, I was just trying to get my shit sorted. I would also be like, “okay, I’m going to do this. I’m going to stick to these plans”. Then I’d go away and do the opposite thing. And I was enjoying being on that ride at the time, just going back and forth and not necessarily having the discipline that I usually have. I wrote a song about the fact that within me, and most people, is a constant battle with yourself.

‘Lost Cause’

Lost Cause has a nice story in terms of my relationship with the song. We rewrote it probably a hundred times and I really didn’t like the song. I loved elements of it, but I couldn’t get it to work for me, and it just didn’t sound good. I felt like it was too long, and I felt like there were just so many issues. And then when we were in Wales, we worked with the Sleep Token vocalist who came and did a writing session with us. We worked on a bunch of different things and we kind of ended up honing in on that song and he changed a few things around. It got to a point where it changed my vision of where the song could go. And then still I wasn’t happy with it and it still went through many revisions.

I still remember the day that we finished recording it and I was like, “I’m always going to hate this song”. Then I gave it a month’s space and it was actually recently that I listened to it – now it’s probably my second favorite song on the record, so it’s been a weird little path. But I guess the moral of the story is to keep trying with certain things creatively, you can end up liking them. But I definitely thought earlier on that it was just going to be one of those ones that I just pretended didn’t happen.

‘No Future’

No Future is definitely a COVID song. It’s a song about what it felt like to have this huge uncertainty in the world and everybody was going crazy. For us, I feel like we thrive in that kind of environment. A lot of the lyrics in No Future are dealing with how I felt about the whole thing at the time. And I feel that moments like that really showcase the current situation that we’re in with the internet and how people talk to one another and the fact that we can’t coexist with people who have differing opinions. None of the people in my band were really even on one side or the other. It was just a fact of: there’s all these people that are basically just spewing hate at each other and nobody’s having any sort of positive conversation.

Especially in music and in this genre, I firmly believe that if someone decides to take a stance about their own personal life: people shouldn’t hate them for it. At least that’s how I felt. And I saw the way that certain people were getting treated during that period, it just felt like a weird place. And it really hit home, like, “okay, this is how humanity is”. I talk about a lot of those things in No Future and I also talk about the fact that that shit doesn’t scare me, nothing does. The idea of chaos and the idea of dying one day. I almost like the fact that there is this finite nature to life. And I feel like if more people could lean into it, it would bring them a lot of peace if they learnt to suffer a little better instead of trying to be comfortable.

‘Self Help’

The first half of Self Help is just a room mic recording of me playing guitar. I really think that in terms of the messages throughout the EP, Self Help is a coming together of all of them. It covers doubt and uncertainty, personal struggle, and the feeling of anxiety and stress that can come from thinking about the future too much. The idea behind the song is that I’m having a conversation with myself in the future trying to figure out how everything went. But I think that the point of the song and what it came to be, to me, is that longing for that closure or an answer about the future. That longing is pain, essentially. And when you can separate yourself from even wanting to ask that question, your life can become a lot better.

I think that that’s why this song does have this attitude that’s just like, “keep fucking going, keep doing what you’re doing”. I was in this place and I was almost saying that to myself in a weird way. And you don’t realize these things in the moment. You look back at it and it’s just like, “it doesn’t matter what happens, you might die soon, just keep doing what you’re doing. Everything’s okay. You’re not going to get these answers”. Throughout A Muse, all of the songs are asking these questions, “is it like this? Is it like that? Am I okay? Am I good enough?”. And the real answer is: “it doesn’t matter. Stay in the game, baby.”

A Muse is out now through UNFD. Listen here

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