BANKS ARCADE - Back to the Future
Written by: Tom Wilson @thetomwilsonexperiment - Sense Music Media | Monday 4th July 2022
Pandemics and Future Lovers with Joshua O’Donnell
No one is going to forget 2020 in a hurry. The fear. The isolation. The uncertainty. Recorded in the midst of that chaos was Future Lovers, the debut LP of New Zealand/Australian eccentrics BANKS ARCADE, and it’s finally being unleashed. Ahead of their shows with THORNHILL and IN HEARTS WAKE, I spoke to vocalist Joshua O’Donnell about forging an album amidst lockdowns, and who would win in a battle between our two countries…
I was having a look at the artwork for Future Lovers, and it looks fantastic. What was the concept behind it?
Pat Fox did that art, and he’s incredible. He’s a legend, and he has been responsible for a lot of recognisable album art in the heavy space. He’s an absolute legend, and he and I had a lot of phone conversations and he really got inside my head in terms of the album and how it was created. The concept basically comes from the fact that the album is quite eclectic, and it’s written in what I would call “different voices”, or different tones, where I will want to go and express this emotion, and express this emotion through using various different genres and musical techniques, but also I will go into a literal character, and Pat really pushed me to say, “Okay, so what are these actual characters?” I had written them down in a document that kind of explained the album, and I gave that to him, and then he worked with a lot of awesome stylists and photographers to try and create those four different characters in a visual sense, and actually put them on the album artwork. You have the four different characters that come through in the album, and then you’ve got the person in the middle, who’s kind of dealing with this identity crisis, I guess. So yeah, it’s really awesome, and I think we’re all super stoked with it.
Pictured: Future Lovers cover art by Pat Fox
It’s interesting that you’re talking about the different sounds in it. I’ve noticed with bands like you and, for example, OCEAN GROVE, and even the big metalcore ones like NORTHLANE and stuff … I’m thirty-six, so when I think back on the music I grew up on, music was a lot more genre-d – a lot more pigeonholed. People got a sound and they stuck to it, whereas I chuck on an album like yours and it will go from something that sounds like THE PRODIGY to a guitar riff that sounds like it’s from MESHUGGAH. There’s this incredible disregard for wanting to be boxed into something that I think your generation of musos is doing a really good job of.
I definitely agree with you. I think it’s a product of the internet. It’s a product of the age that we live in. When this album was written … it was written in a time of extreme uncertainty – at a time where no one saw any future in anything, let alone being in a metal band … which most people don’t see a future in anyway. [Laughs] That took the pressure off, to say, “Look, we all like all these different things – we like diverse genres.” Why can’t I have two things that I like, just because they’re from completely different worlds? I can have the first half of a song like Fake Your Death, which sounds like NORTHLANE, and the second half of that song sounds like SAINt JHN, who’s in a completely different stratosphere, so much so that if you said one of the names to a fan of the other artist, they would have no idea who they are, but then you put them together, and everyone will herald it as something unique, where really, it’s just drawing from all the things that inspire me, and all of the things that I like. Because that’s my favourite song – that’s combining the two things that I like, and putting them in a song, so that I can listen to it and be like, “Dope! This is what I want to hear.” That, I guess, is a big goal as a musician. If you can write something that you would like to listen to, then you’re doing it right, I think. [Laughs]
Can you imagine being in the record label’s head the first time SYSTEM OF A DOWN rocked up with Toxicity? “It sounds a little bit like Armenian folk music, and a little bit like SLAYER.” [Laughs]
Yeah, exactly! There are so many of those bands. And yeah, I think it’s just not being afraid, and not restricting yourself to “We have to sound like this.” It’s almost got so far to the point now where “don’t put me in a box” is its own cliché, when a lot of times you actually can just put something in a box … So I’m not really trying to do that. All I’m trying to do is look at the things that I like and the things that have inspired me, and the people that I look up to, and if I can draw from that accurately, and then also accurately express myself, that’s the only goal that I have in music, and I think a lot of the other boys would have the same … We all get to have our voice in some way, through the creative process, and when it comes to the end of a writing process for this band, I feel like we can all – especially with this record – look fondly on it.
Speaking of the record, I understand that the recording process was … “interesting” to say the least. What can you tell me about it?
To give a bit of context as to where we’re at right now, because I think it is relevant, we’ve already recorded the next album, when we were just in the U.K., so we’re ahead in terms of where we’re at. I’ll speak to that process quickly, because that process was brutal and gruelling, and although we’re very happy with what we got out of it, it was a very difficult time, in a very uncertain place, with a lot of expectations and limitations placed upon it. Future Lovers, on the other hand, even though it was very chaotic, I feel like it just flowed. The entire project was completed in ten days … that’s including the music videos. So we went up to Auckland and we locked ourselves in a studio, at a time where, when we recorded it, we thought, this is the one week we’re going to get to be able to travel up there in between lockdowns, because we were convinced that we were going to lockdown again, and our plan was that, well, we’ll all be in the same bubble – we’re just going to say we’re moving to Auckland, to the studio, indefinitely, and just hope that they don’t lockdown. We literally had this amount of days, and they locked down right after we finished, so we had ten days of all-out, furious recording, late nights, and everybody in the team was just hitting home runs the whole time. There wasn’t much room for failure – there wasn’t much room for stuff to go wrong. But we didn’t feel that as a pressure. We all just really enjoyed the process, and had a lot of fun doing it, so I think that we’ll all look back on that, even though it was such a crazy time, we were able to do something that was really enjoyable, and really summed up why we wanted to be musicians. It was the good part of all this, I guess.
I’m kind of impressed that you were able to record thirteen songs while each of you was battling illness.
I think I mentioned that as a passing comment to somebody and it’s sort of latched on. Some of the guys didn’t even recognise that that was a highlight of it. We all got strep throat, which obviously, as a vocalist, was really not that good. We kind of cycled through it. We were recording one thing, and someone would have it, and obviously, it was in the time when COVID was really [common], so we were like, “Oh no, do we have COVID?” And at that point, we couldn’t really do anything. We were locked in a room, so we just had to hope for the best, really.
Josh, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Tom, this has been a great interview, but it’s been a bit high-brow.” Don’t worry, we’re going to fix that right now. Who’d win in a fight between Australia and New Zealand?
Well, listen mate, this is already answered, okay? Because Israel Adesanya came over here, and you put forward your best boy. You put him in there, Robert Whittaker. I was there, in front of the biggest crowd the UFC’s ever seen, and he knocked him out cold, and he did not get up … and some would say he still hasn’t gotten up after that. So I think we’ve got a pretty clear answer to that question, my friend. And technically, the best fighter from Australia is actually from New Zealand, so there we go! [Laughs]
Can you take me through each member of your band and tell me what you like most about them?
Well, that’s kind of wholesome. I’ll say, as a general answer, what I like most about all of them is that, in reality, if I was to answer this question and say something absolutely ridiculous and stupid, that they would all find it funny, and we would have a laugh about it, and that’s something that I love about this band; they’re my best friends, and we just have fun. But to make it more specific, I would say that Harlan [Allen-Jones] is probably the craziest motherfucker I’ve ever met. He truly just sums up chaotic energy, and it’s very hard to deal with on some levels, and it is amazing on other levels. When we were at Download in the U.K., playing the biggest festival we’ve ever played, he climbed up onto the P.A. and does a backflip off it in front of the whole crowd with his bass in his hand. It was incredible. And he said onstage, “If I miss this backflip, we’re not going to play this next song.” The crowd went crazy, and it was all on video … it was great … To give an absolute opposite, Jason, who does all of our tech and all of our sound, he’s the longest member of the band other than myself, and he’s very good at organising things and at solving problems under pressure. The amount of times we’ve a show where we’re like, “We’re not going to be able to do this.” As a band at our level, we don’t have big crews or anything. We literally go over there, have to sort out our own accreditation, we have to sort out everything at a big festival. Our gear is all over the place, we’re camping, it’s difficult. To be able to actually show up and pull off the show on a technical level … there is a 60/40 chance that it’s not going to work, and he has come through many times on that … As far as James is concerned, he’s just a silly, goofy guy. He’s always going to make people laugh, wherever we go. As a reference, he came into the official label meetings that we had today wearing a cow hat – a hat that’s cow print – with a hoodie over it, with a chain wrapped around the hoodie. It somehow still managed to look good, but also make everyone laugh. They’re all good guys in their own right, and I love them dearly.
BANKS ARCADE tour Australia with THORNHILL in July, and IN HEARTS WAKE in August.
Get THORNHILL tickets here, and IN HEARTS WAKE tickets here.
Future Lovers is out Friday the 29th of July.
Pictured: BANKS ARCADE
Photo by: Neal Walters