The Way I Grew Strong: The Banks Retrospective
In religious terms, the altar is a place of sacrifice, of devotion, confession, and offering, it acts as a portal to something higher, something more than mere man. And for American singer, Banks, the Altar is the pedestal on which she stands, where she treads the line between being an indomitable Goddess and a vulnerable lover.
Banks’ second studio album, The Altar, was released on 30th September, 2016–9 months after touring with The Weekend for her first album, Goddess. The Altar debuted at number 17 on the US Billboard 200 and number 24 on the UK Albums Chart and whilst it generally received quite positive reviews from the majority of music critics, the more notable music publications, such as Rolling Stone and Pitchfork really tore into the album, calling it wearying and conventional, even the Guardian wrote that the record felt “claustrophobic, stretched and a try-hard attempt”.
Nevertheless, The Altar remains a firm favourite amongst her fan base and a solid continuation of the alluring sounds and narratives she introduced in her first album, Goddess. For me, The Altar is a commendable and exciting piece of work. It’s ultimately, something that marks a difficult but developmental, seminal period in Banks’ life and I think this album encapsulates and articulates this perfectly.
Sonically, The Altar picks up where Goddess left off. In fact, many of the producers who worked on her first album returned for her second, which allowed for Banks’ sensually melancholic sound to return.
In a wider context, Banks’ sound is influenced by R&B and Pop, but she deconstructs these and then reinvents them to shape a sound that fits her own sonic desires. She does this to such an extent that the spare, percussive instrumentation throughout The Altar actually works to expose her raw vocals. Consequently, the risks she took on this record with her singing, and her refined sound in general, really add a noticeable texture to the album, creating a tangible sense of perspective, of someone recounting actual emotion — and when combined with the brutal honesty of her lyrics, the effect is mesmerizing.
The album flows so smoothly that once you press play, it’s easy to trap yourself in for the whole album, listening, track after track, lyrics after lyrics, to her story unfold.
From the narrative themes explored throughout this album, we can easily discern the contours of Banks’ mind. She cultivates an unashamedly intimate and confessional tone, artfully washing universal experiences with her own emotional interpretations of certain periods or people in her life. Whatsmore, she lyrically cloaks these to obscure the finite specifics behind these musings — and that’s really to the record’s benefit. It keeps us locked in, waiting to hear what will happen next, what her next savagely independent or heartbreaking declaration will be.
As a lyricist, this is where Banks excels — exploring the honest depths of conflicting human emotion. She navigates the timeless themes of self-discovery, relationships, femininity and, perhaps most critically, strength and weakness, both as a woman and as a human being. Through this, Banks polarises her experiences, with each track being a testament to opposite ends of her vulnerability or her defiance. Fittingly, these experiences come from her time maturing as a woman, as a lover, and as an artist — maturing as all three in the often cutthroat and male-dominated music industry, where female artists are often overlooked, misrepresented or manipulated. In an interview with The Guardian, she says that a big thing in her music is “to highlight being human, being emotional, and powerful, like a goddess. Being brave enough to just be unapologetic for who you are”. And for me, that’s what The Altar articulates — Banks’ overcoming herself to become herself.
Within this, it is not only Bank’s ability to express universal experiences of heartbreak, betrayal, growth, and love, but also her frankness in articulating the things she has encountered as a confident yet exposed person, as a woman overcoming the trials and tribulations of her own youth, that has gifted many other young women with the ability to grow alongside her, to find strength in who they are, in their positions and their potentials.
Throughout The Altar, Banks’ songs act as more than mere songs about heartbreak or loss — the songs where Banks exposes her vulnerability are also the songs where she reminds us that she needs no one other than herself to satisfy her desires. Banks has excelled at transforming romantic and youthful scarring into excellent songcraft. We see the hard-won confidence Banks has developed since her first album, Goddess, for in The Altar, each beat hits harder, each synth strikes that little bit more and each lyric burns deeper than ever before.
The Altar is a place where things are direct, front and center, where Banks can be Banks, with her emotions laid bare for the world to hear. And whilst these may be contrasting or confusing, they’re human and they’re honest. The Altar is her world as an insular and enclosed piece of work, but it is also her most private thoughts in her most public place. And we must be grateful for that. These are the genuine emotions of someone, a young woman, maturing in a world where people are told who and what to be, where they are built up and torn down by those closest to them. The Altar is her response to this and it marks a radical intensification of her talents and her personal growth.
In an interview, she states that she started making music because she needed a place to listen to herself. It was like her best friend, her most nurturing, loyal friend. And The Altar is just that. It works as her confessional, as her altar, where she talks about the past to free herself for the future — but where the enigmatic, and now formidable, Banks will go next is anyone’s guess.
