Alright, imagine if Bauhaus, Agent Orange and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion had a love child band. Now imagine if the lead singer of this band was Noodle from Gorillaz. Take all of that and make it the soundtrack of Baby Driver, except where the main character is played by Devon Aoki. Now watch that movie with your headphones on at full volume — this is, essentially, the experience of listening to bananahaus’ welcome to the bananahaus.
Personally I’m the type of music listener that picks songs from different albums and puts them all together in a playlist, but this is the sort of album that you can’t stop listening to until you’ve experienced it from start to finish. “bananahaus,” the first track, is a nice lead-in to the rest of the album. I loved the track’s opening sequence and the small lull before the lead guitar began playing — the rhythm created by the guitar and drums throughout each song is very addictive. bananahaus are able to combine a fast tempo with high-pitched vocals and a vintage 80s/90s-type sound to create something that really reminds me of Le Tigre. “pecking order” keeps ramping things up, followed by “beef stew” which at first mellows out the album’s flow by slowing the pace a bit and focusing more on interesting chord progressions and intervals, before speeding up towards the end.
One of my favourite tracks was the next one, “gonna show,” particularly for the drums and both the lead and rhythm guitar work. I love when artists include monologues/spoken word to their music, and to have that added to the end made “gonna show” all the more enjoyable to listen to. “mouse trap,” the fifth track on the album had an awesome sound. I like that bananahaus aligns the lead guitar to the melody, and with their particular voice it worked really well. The final track, “tally the score” was a perfect finish. Somehow, they managed to recreate the consistent feel that they maintain throughout the album while also giving it the feeling of an ending track. I felt like I was watching the end of Baby-Driver-feat-Devon-Aoki. Great job bananahaus on the fantastic first album! I can’t wait to see what they come up with in the future.
