Banks: The Altar review – an unconvincing 2016 pop moodboard

LA singer Banks wants you to worship at her altar, but with her frosty exterior comes the concern that she might pin you on it and eviscerate you as if she’s Nancy from The Craft. Moreso on her second album: gone is the dewy, vulnerable electronica of her debut, for which she was hailed alongside FKA twigs as a “future R&B ingenue”; now she’s putting in an application for the Fifty Shades Darker soundtrack. Judas has the Weeknd’s perfume-ad sex vibes down, and on Weaker Girl, his light 80s electro-funk, as she sings, unconvincingly, “Imma need a bad motherfucker like me”. For big pop bids, Gemini Feed is a decent slice of obsidian misery-house, recalling Empress Of. But mostly The Altar is claustrophobic with try-hardness. Banks doesn’t sound empowered, she sounds stretched, as on acousto-bleater Mother Earth, or on the truly toe-curling line in Fuck With Myself when she appears to “go a bit Kendrick”. Nothing is sacred, sure, but such a 2016 musical moodboard hardly inspires devotion.