by Sean Deveney (@stdystrictures)
“Alpha” was the first song I heard from Banana when I came across a version they recorded for a video with Allston Pudding. The central role of the bass and Chelsea Ursin’s vocals both present themselves as two dominant factors of the band’s sound as well as two things that make it unique. Throughout the video, bananas make various cameo appearances including as a guitar pick and as drum sticks.
Banana’s specialty is sludge, and it can be heard easily on this song, which is from 2017’s Die Alone Pt. 2, when Ursin sings, “You alpha piece of shit” amid raging fuzz. A band rocking out in a basement with and surrounded by bananas while singing about alpha types is truly a band that is hard to forget, so the news of recent material being released was quite exciting.
The “Intro” to Banana’s Post-Grunge Revival is the wall of noise you walk through as you enter this EP. In a movie, it would be the opening flyover shot, setting the scene for the heaviness that is to come. With it is a piercing melody that gives depth to the heaviness and breaks through it, much like Ursin’s lyrics in the ensuing songs.
On “Tiny Bones,” she sings, “I don’t like this place, but I kind of like your body. Come up to my room, and I’ll throw you out the window.” The song then later returns to explosions of sludge in such a beautiful manner. Like “Tiny Bones” and actually all Banana songs, “Florida” also has an excellent hook. The lone bass line is quickly joined by fuzz and drums and transforms into delightful doom before returning to that original idea but now with a groove. “Kittie” keeps with the explosive theme but in a more sustained way and with lyrics such as, “All this time that I never had, I’m going to take it all back,” which are then punctuated with meows.
The frequent coexistence of serious topics and light-hearted antics is also seen in the closer, “MooMoo.” Another satisfying wall of messy, cathartic sludge provides a context in which Ursin describes a cow giving birth to another cow and then talks about having a piece of cheddar cheese stuck between her teeth.
There are times when Banana is raging for a reason and other times when they may just be raging. These days, a reason is never too far away. For a lot of bands with a similar volume, the noise may grow stale if it continues so steadily throughout an album. Banana, however, does the impossible and somehow retains that perfect yellow, always offering itself to be enjoyed by a hungry listener.