Banks Arcade vocalist Joshua O’Donnell goes in on the excitable, love-laced and hopeful experiences that have inspired the band’s bold and brash new record.
Banks Arcade was born in a small town in New Zealand, and we always had big dreams of taking our music around the world. When I started the band, I had no doubts within me that we were going to find success, tour the world, and be able to do amazing things with our music, and we did get to have a lot of those experiences.
We got to realise many of our biggest dreams, and tour with some of our favourite bands. With that came a lot of setbacks. COVID was really hard on us, as it was right after we released our first album, and we felt like we struggled to get back the momentum in some ways.
There was just one thing after another that really pushed us back. This album really has this underdog spirit woven into it, and a lot of the themes in the album explore ideas of feeling like you always come off second best, but you still take that like a champion.
The idea of somebody who doesn’t have to be the winner but still carries themself in that way. That was something that I really wanted to convey in the album because we always had that mentality that no matter what.
Even if we’re not the best in the room, we’re always going to go out swinging.
I have always written from a very dark place and held a belief that I had to be down to be creative, but on this album I experienced writing from a place of love and hope.
We wrote this for people who feel like they aren’t invited or don’t necessarily fit in, but still show up regardless of how many times they get knocked down.
Most of the album came together while we were in America on tour with Thornhill and Ocean Grove, two bands we respect and admire greatly. The writing experience felt very pure and it’s the most collaborative the band has ever been with James stepping up his production skills and really helping to bring the ideas to life.
In the past, I tended to write in a vacuum, and it would be very back and forth, but this time we really worked together on most aspects.
During the tour, we spoke with Sam Bassal from OG about working on the record, and his style of mixing and production meshed perfectly with us. He really brought those last few percent out of the songs and it genuinely felt effortless to work on the songs with him.
This is the first time in our career I am truly happy with the music. It’s exactly what I have always tried to express and exactly what I wanted to hear.
As artists, I feel we achieved something I was never really sure existed, but we are a year on from getting the final mixes, and I still bump the album every week.
MOVE
This song was written on my birthday. We were in the midst of the American tour in an RV campsite hanging with the OG boys. We had the RVs parked up, and we had a little fire going.
When we first got there, everyone was hanging out, but me and James, on our way there, had been throwing riff ideas back and forth. One of us would drive the RV, and the other one would be in the passenger seat, and then we would switch over and work on the track. We wrote the main structure of the song all in that day, and I wrote the majority of the lyrics at the campsite.
This is one of the only tracks on the album where we had one main vocal as the focus. We did a one-take in the studio, and we built all the vocals around that one main take. We went the lightest on the editing for the whole album. The themes in this song are more aesthetic, it’s drawing a comparison between what we do as artists and the way that we engage with the crowd and the idea of seduction and trying to win someone over.
DON’T MISS
This track really embodies the energy of the album. It’s set with two lovers caught up in a relationship that’s ending, and it’s written from the perspective of someone who feels like an outsider that has nothing to lose. It has the vibe of going out in flames and throwing caution to the wind for one last time. It really does cover a lot of the themes of just being an underdog and not being invited but showing up anyway and showing up sexy.
The instrumental of this song actually went through so many changes. I initially made it as just kind of a bit of a metalcore joke track. When I first wrote riffs and the breakdown it was really silly and I sent it through to James and then he actually really liked it and we kept workshopping it. Once he added the production elements, I feel like it really came to life.
ROCKSTAR
This whole song came together in one late night in the studio. I pulled up an old 30-second sample James had made, and I built the whole song around it pretty quickly.
When we started writing this album, I very much stated I wanted to move away from saying ignorant shit in songs and make the lyrical content more serious hence the line, ‘I said I was done making ignorant shit but I lied.’
But I was just in the studio at like 1am. I was feeling myself, life was feeling pretty good, and I just felt like writing something fun and stupid to break the tension. It’s a pretty simple one to be honest.
MIRROR
This is a very heavy song for me. It went through many iterations and took the most effort to get right, but It’s one of my favourites on the album.
I’ll let the lyrics speak for themselves on this one, as it’s pretty personal.
SEVERANCE
This song is about letting go. It balances that push and pull between desire and sacrifice. It covers themes of separating from things, relationships, and people to pursue a path that you know that you’re meant for.
Ironically, it’s a very sexy song, and it has a lot of sensual themes to it, but it really is about cutting something off that isn’t serving your higher purpose, in spite of you still wanting it and desiring to have that thing.
I think doing something like music or committing yourself to a path, you get to have amazing moments, but you have to make a lot of sacrifices, and there’s this dark feeling those decisions give you, but there’s also an allure to it.
I was listening to a lot of the latest The Weeknd album at the time of writing this, like pretty much every modern artist these days. The flows were very inspired by his style of writing.
KNOW ME
If there’s one song that thematically sums up the whole album, and the essence of the band it’s 'Know Me’.
I was getting high with one of my friends watching movies, and James sent me a 30-second recording and said, 'I’m pretty sure this is stupid, but I’ll send it anyway’, which made me know I was about to get some absolute HEAT. As soon as I heard the sample, I had the whole song mapped out in my head. I left my friend’s house and sprinted home to flesh it out. Most of the song came together on that night, and it really is just a fun little flex track.
It captures the relentless pendulum swing between total self-belief and crippling self-doubt, and the resolve to do it anyway regardless of how you feel.
'Late nights in a shit hole trying to find God in a pen. Mama thinks it’ll kill me, but I’ll die here with my friends’. It’s an anthem for committing fully to the cause alongside your brothers, win or lose.
The track has hope, and it really manifests success in a way that is reminiscent of how I felt when I first started making music, and I had nothing but unfettered belief in myself and what I could do.
You don’t need external validation, fame, or industry acclaim to be great; you already are that if you embody it within yourself.
YUCK!
'Yuck’ was one of the earliest songs written on the album. We had gone out to a house in the middle of nowhere for a few weeks to try and write some ideas and get some stuff going, probably a year before the bulk of the album was written. Me and James had been listening to lots of Playboi Carti, and I woke up and wrote the riffs in the morning, then spent a whole day not really writing anything good lyrically.
Right at the end of the day, before we were about to leave and go get some food, we put on ‘Backrooms’ by Travis Scott and Carti, and I just started popping off on some ignorant shit.
It’s stupid, and it’s the heaviest track on the album.
I’m pretty sure Sammy had his head in his hands for the entirety of the vocal tracking session on this one, haha.
000
This song was also written at the same house in the middle of nowhere. It covers feelings of being disillusioned with the music industry and with how hard it is to get ahead, but it also expresses the realisation that doing this is a choice.
We want to do this, and we keep coming back for more regardless of whatever setbacks we have. I think we’re addicted to doing this music shit. We love it, and it’s very hard for us to stop.
I always get really pissed off when I hear artists complaining about how hard it is to make music and tour because, in my eyes, doing this is a privilege. So many people in this world live lives that are so hard, and the worst day on tour would be the best day of their life. So even if things aren’t going great, we always remember this is a choice and we can tap out any time.
'It’s a losing game, but I’m a winner, baby’ is just a cheeky little line that’s like, ‘Yeah, we know this shit’s hard. We know it’s not easy to make it, but we believe in ourselves, so we’re still here.’
The whole song is kind of arrogant, but it drops the front at the very end to reveal the emotional core of the band.
LAST TIME
'Last Time’ is my favourite track on the whole album. Again, it was written when we were on the Thornhill tour. It’s a personal love story that mirrors the ultimate faith I have in the band.
I had just met someone and I was falling in love very quickly. In the past, I’d been really negative and not very hopeful when it came to relationships, and this time, I had full belief that it was going to work out. I saw a future with this person almost immediately, it was such an amazing feeling that didn’t have any of the toxic elements to it.
It felt really like love. The whole song is kind of saying maybe this will be the last time I have to do this. Maybe this will be the last time I have to fall in love with someone. It’s really hopeful, and it felt like I was breaking free from a lot of old patterns when writing this.
It was also analogous to the band, you know, instead of just being jaded and being upset that we haven’t made it, it was a song that really felt like maybe we’ll crack it with this one.
TBA on the happy ending though, haha.
WAIT
The only Banks Arcade love song that there is. It’s a huge anthem for all the yearners.
I wrote it for my girlfriend’s birthday as an acoustic song (Don’t ask how long we had been dating cause it was way too soon), and then I ended up building it into a full-band song later down the road.
HAVE FAITH
This song means so much to me.
The original version of this track has existed since COVID era. It was originally just a fully electronic track that James sent me. I jumped on it and did a one-take and sent it back, and it sat like that for years.
I feel as though it’s the best I have ever written lyrically, and it’s definitely the track I want played at my funeral.
James has always been my closest friend, and this felt like the perfect blend of his production and my vocals and it covers a lot of existential themes we have spent 100s of hours yapping about across the 12 years we have known each other.
It’s a message to my lowest self from my higher self to remind me to trust the process and keep going forward when I’m at my lowest.
Entropy will increase forever, and I doubt we will gain clarity on much absolute truth outside of that as long as humans live.
We are all going to die, everything will eventually decay, and that is why art, music, love and true human connection should be our main concern. If we lose concern for the experience of others we will all become isolated and lose our sense of humanity.
These fleeting moments that are in some ways meaningless come to hold so much meaning when you zoom out and realise how fragile existence is.
The world is in an existential war, and all of the beautiful things in life are under more threat than they have ever been. I am very grateful to have been privileged enough to express myself fully with people that I love.
Music transcends language and allows people to feel connected in a way nothing else does.
It communicates directly to my fucking soul and has made me feel seen when nothing else did, and I am thankful for its presence in my life.
Maybe this album takes us to the moon, or maybe it’s the last thing we ever make.
Regardless I fucking love it and I hope you do too.
