Album Review: BANKS - The Altar

Album cover

The Altar is the second studio album by American singer and songwriter Banks, released on September 30th, 2016.

"I feel more comfortable being confrontational and authoritative. It’s important for women in this business. I felt so scared of people thinking I was like a bitch just for saying what I wanted on my video or in my picture or on my song." Said Banks about it.

The Altar is an alternative pop album, with influences of R&B, electro pop and hip hop. The album talks mainly about conflictual relationships and unrequited love. The Altar shows us a vulnerable Banks.

The opening tracks is Gemini Feed, which encompasses what the whole album is. In this first track, Banks touches the topic of an emotionally manipulative ex-lover, she said about it: "the people who affect you the most are the ones closest to you, and usually the ones you know you really love." Continuing with this issue, in Mind Games we can hear a worried girl who really cares about her relationship with a boy and she's trying to fix it. This Is Not About Us she tries to explain to her ex-boyfriend that they are over and they’ll never make up again. However, the stronger song about relationships is the ninth track called Judas, featuring light vocals infused with hip-hop elements, where Banks is comparing his lover with Judas "the infamous Apostle who betrayed Jesus Christ", in this case, her lover has betrayed her.

"Never came around to make this house into a home

Put you on a pedestal and sat you on a throne

I found all your skeletons, your closet full of bones

I see you take pride in bloody eyes, I know you're stoned"

The Altar is a great album, that touches painful issues with dark beats. While reading some interviews where Banks talked about the songs from her newest album, I found out something very interesting about Trainwreck. The fifth track contains verses that she wrote when she was 14 years old! She said about it: "They stayed in my head! It was like a chant. I do remember writing it—I wrote it down in a notebook. I always remember those lyrics, though. There are some lyrics that I’ve written that I always will remember."

Nonetheless, my favorite song was Weaker Girl, the track infuses alternative-pop elements with orchestral backing, where Jillian Rose Banks talks about her necesities, in this case, she need a bad motherfucker like her, not a weaker boy. This album has some ballads, such as: Mother Earth, a beautiful song about "feeling sickened by the way society, the world, and this business make women feel."

In Haunt and Poltergeist she continues singing about vulnerable memories. Personally, To the Hilt is the saddest song, it is about the man she used to be with and the lyrics are amazingly beautiful. 

I will end explaining the meaning of one of the best tracks from The Altar. Fuck with Myself, which was the first single from the album. It is about to love ourselves first, in the part where she sings "Cause I fuck with myself more than anybody else", she explained it saying: "It can also mean I mess with myself more than anybody else. We can be our own bullies and our own biggest champions."

BANKS - The Altar: ★★★★★  

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