The worst crime wrought by this decade's wave of woozy, trip-hop-influenced R&B has been inciting boredom. Dreary, midtempo music often triggers that feeling, and those are two adjectives that could describe Goddess, the debut album by Jillian Banks, at both its best and worst. Banks is an American singer/songwriter in her mid-twenties who made it big after Zane Lowe played her single "Before I Ever Met You"on his BBC Radio 1 show; with its dull greyscale backing track, the tune put all the emphasis on her voice, husky and rough around the edges. Banks' vocals carried an ambiguous and perpetual fatigue that might have been personal, or just a response to the crush of the world around her. As embryonic as it was, "Before I Ever Met You," showed real promise, like a Martina Topley-Bird for the Weeknd generation.
In the year that followed, she hooked up with a number of fashionable, bubbling-under producers: Shlohmo, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Lil Silva, and Sohn have all put their magic on her vocal tracks, and she's built a coherent catalog by sucking the color out of their work, like some ravenous musical Marceline. When it works, the effect is mezmerising, with an atmosphere that hangs thick in the room like incense. But as with any scent so strong, it can just as easily linger and turn stale. Compare the Shlohmo-assisted "Brain" with last year's "Waiting Game", produced by Sohn. The former seems like a match made in heaven, but Banks ends up duetting with Shlohmo's distorted squalls, and the two lock step into one blandly weary march. "Waiting Game", on the other hand, is a naked ballad where Banks' voice floats high and reedy, and the only flourish is some wafting gospel vocals in the background.
"Waiting Game" is Banks' best moment, a tortured torch song directed at another performer: "What if I never even see you 'cause we're both on a stage/ But don't tell me listen to your song because it isn't the same." It originally appeared on London, a 2013 EP that saw her backed up by UK artists Lil Silva, Jamie Woon, and Tim Anderson. They're also responsible for "This Is What It Feels Like", a should-be-smoulderer that can't quite ignite—imagine the writhing bassline from Ginuwine's "Pony" turned limp and lifeless. The tender "Change" comes from the same EP, while "Warm Water" is a holdover from last year as well. Goddess ends up with the hodgepodge feel of a music industry product that was forced to exist, rather than an album that came together naturally.
If London caught Banks at an especially vulnerable moment, showing off her range and raw emotion, then Goddess tries too hard to push in either direction, alternately shrouding her in smoke ("Stick") or hammily over-emoting ("You Should Know Where I'm Coming From"). Opener "Alibi", another Sohn-produced cut, has an impassioned chorus, but her multi-tracked voice dissipates on impact, too wispy and rehearsed. On "Goddess", her run-on mushmouth obscures an otherwise fiery scorned lover narrative, and the same goes for the jaunty "Fuck 'Em Only We Know", where she practically whispers the chorus as if she were afraid to let a profanity slip.
Buried deep in the album is "Beggin for Thread", a brief respite of (relative) sunshine with perky drums and a lilting chorus. Catchy in spite of its desperate lyrics, there are moments where she sounds unpretentious and charming, which is more than you can say for the rest of Goddess. Banks' aesthetic often feels far too cultivated; it's all trendy misery assisted by equally fashionable producers, without any substance to hold it all up. Whenever she does try to get personal, the phrasing and lyrics come off stilted and awkward, the hallmark of a novice songwriter ("What if I said I was built on bricks of carelessness and crumbs?"). Armed with a voice that can go from brooding and low to spine-tingly icy in the span of one musical measure, Banks could certainly go places—but Goddess doesn't, and instead seems content to wallow in the same depressive rut for an exhausting 59 minutes.
