Intervallic Travails by Blank Banker

Letter of Recommendation: Blank Banker, Intervallic Travails

As the opening track from Intervallic Travails begins, the listener might be forgiven for thinking they were hearing an outtake from Polvo’s Exploded Drawing sessions: the roomy drum sounds; the interwoven guitar lines, both bendy and heavy-riffy; the complex noisiness that also rocks at an elemental level. A sharp intake of breath is audible just before the vocals kick in, a last gasp before leaping into a whirlpool.

Blank Banker has always moved easily between avant-garde post-rock complexity and more accessible grooves and melodies: they can rip through a cover of “Barstool Blues” that rocks harder than Crazy Horse and then bend your head with a weird combination of notes and rhythms that might in brief flashes remind you of shit you like, but which doesn’t sound quite like anything you’ve ever heard before.

The guitar tones on Intervallic Travails are the highlight, as usual on a Blank Banker record, with Orion Layton and Andy Rench cycling through a diverse range of carefully hewn sounds. The popping-and-crackling sustained chords that undergird “Fault” sound like guitar strings simmering in hot oil. Layton has been pushing the boundaries of guitar-driven indie/post-rock with Blank Banker since the 1990s, and he’s cultivated a distinctive and individuated style. These guitars never sit still for a second, stretching and bouncing and bobbing and weaving in and out of the vocal melodies. Familiar source material and influences rise to the surface from time to time: a brief sequence that evokes early Sonic Youth (“School”), or maybe late Walkmen (“Tomcats”); traces of speed metal (“Cairn”); the ubiquitous echoes of Ash Bowie; even flashes of Steely Dan and prog rock. But the combination, anchored by the airtight, propulsive rhythm section of Neal Markowski and Jon Strasheim (Daddy’s Boy), is pure Blank Banker.

Layton is the rare guitarist who consistently lays down dynamic, compelling lead-guitar sequences—I don’t want to call them “solos,” as they completely eschew wankery and cliché—that always take the listener on a trip full of unexpected turns, smoldering depths, and surprising eruptions, like the best of Mascis, Martsch, or Young (check out the second half of “Anna’s Laminate” for a prime example).

The lyrics and song titles might have you reaching for a dictionary (see “Iantaculum”), but the wit and wordplay are as satisfying as the guitar theatrics (“There’s no anomie amongst anemones”!). Definitely listen to these songs with the lyrics visible, so you can appreciate the sheer genius of rendering a line like “What kind of psycho keeps on smiling, / right through the bleakest stage of late capitalism yet? / Is he insouciant?” as singable and even catchy (“Theme from BB”).

The standout track on Intervallic Travails is “Orange Couch,” which begins in familiar Blank Banker territory, with an extended intro and lyrics that evoke what sounds like a therapeutic solo ayahuasca trip (or maybe just some exceptionally strong gummies): “under an Afghan blanket on an orange couch / Doors of perception / were opened wide.” The opening section never returns (once the meds kick in), as the guitar tones dissolve into what sounds like giant gears grinding to a halt before relaunching as a ridiculously catchy and delightful up-tempo staccato chording thing and a downright fucking jaunty bass line (“Look at the self / from far away / changing the self”). The color scheme of this song—this trip—has completely transformed. It might be my favorite transition in any song I’ve ever heard. Every time it comes around, I smile. I don’t want to say it sounds “poppy,” but the infectious appeal is akin to that of a great pop song. The band rides out on this part for a couple of minutes, with variations and intensifications, but always sounding like a sprightly stroll in the sunshine.

The first “Theme from BB” sounds something like Polvo fronted by Frank Black. The “Other Theme from BB” closes out the album with a sound that suggests a stoned take on a campy soundtrack to a 1960s spy-themed TV drama—or maybe a chopped-up re-edit of the Logjammin’ theme in The Big Lebowski. The distance spanned from one “Theme” to the other encapsulates the trip that is listening to this new album: moments of distortion, chaos, and outrage resolve into surprising moments of playfulness, beauty, and even calm. Intervallic Travails is bookended by theme songs that couldn’t sound more distinct from each other, yet the combination makes perfect sense as a sonic effort to define “BB.”

Matt Mitchell

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Blank Banker’s newest record comes out of the gates swinging with a quick flash of a drum fill followed by a bruiser of an opening riff. It has a dizzying effect, like waking up in the middle of a mechanical bull-ride and now head Banker, Orion Layton, is barking directions on how to keep from being thrown off.

Said album, Intervallic Travails, is bookended by two self-dedicated theme songs that feature the same piece of music with drastically different approaches, showcasing the versatility of a band at the peak of its powers. What lies in between are nine more excellent examples of what the band does so well—while many rock bands’ stock-in-trade are guitar lines, Blank Banker deals in extended guitar sentences and full guitar paragraphs.

The band nimbly pulls off unexpected hairpin rhythmic shifts courtesy of dexterous drummer Neal Markowski and is matched beat for beat by bassist Jon Strasheim. And while both guitarists Layton and Andy Rench tie gordian knots out of their dueling lead lines, it’s never about virtuosity for its own sake. The riff mazes always serve the song.

The often addition of Ellen Layton as a second singer provides a wonderful counterpoint to the toughness of it all. Her voice helps highlight the melodic strength of the vocals, bringing them to the front. Layton and Layton constantly shift from honeyed singing to howling bellows, and it’s a treat to hear them circle around each other throughout.

What really shines in this particular collection is how strong the songs are, and how much they’ve evolved since their last record. There’s a lot of patience and detail built into every piece of music. The static blasts that anchor “Fault” will have you questioning if those are even guitars (they are) and the impossibly beautiful and dense chord clusters of “School” will lodge like a kernel in your brain and bloom. It’s catchy and smart rock music conveyed on very agile and muscular fret work.

The back half of Intervallic Travails almost feels like it inverts the approach of the front half. There’s still feedback feints and whammy-bar worship, but Blank Banker really stretches out into pastoral beauty and understatement to create a longer, more languid sense of mood and place. The one-two of “Anna’s Laminate” into “Tomcats” is a high-water mark and pulls off a neat trick of making the audio feel visual. The cinematic conclusion occurs with the penultimate “Cairn”, a tightly-wound piece of high-wire guitar fury. It’s followed by the reappearance of the theme song—this time, imagined as a spooky spaghetti western which serves as a fitting finish for an album that ends where it started.

Roll credits, and run it again.

Faiz Razi, August 2024

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The songs are, in running order, about how nerds might be having a better time than us, Seattle and the Cascadia subduction zone, Cthulhu’s attitude toward climate change, fishing on a hot still day after abruptly quitting antidepressants, laying in a peat bog on purpose, a jerk, doing acid and talking to yourself, pressing and laminating a flower, bringing a doggy bag to stray cats, and scattering ashes.

Blank Banker was a 4-track tape in the 90's, a folder-full of songs leftover from Champaign-Urbana's Rectangle in the early 00's, and now it's a five-piece rock band playing sometimes-poppy, sometimes-angular, sometimes-fake-jazz music with guitar noodles never getting too much in the way of a singable tune. Steely-Youth Polv-ixies?

blankbanker.com