ABC2, Glasgow
Jillian Banks' spidery electronic soul is sparse in intention, but she makes it surprisingly demonstrative live
It's been a rocketship of a year for Jillian Banks, the LA-based creator and sultry-voiced singer of fragmentary electronic soul. The web helped her find a growing fanbase, without her having to dilute a slightly sullen, predominantly black-and-white aesthetic. No wonder she featured on so many sound of 2014 lists – Banks is a bedsit bootstrapper with a more coherent understanding of her image than many established pop stars.
Live, she is flanked by a drummer and a guy who swaps between guitar and synth as required, but the most prominent collaborator is Banks herself. Carefully constructed backing tracks selectively multiply her vocals, conjuring chords, minor-key harmonies and, over the lazy synth growl of This Is What It Feels Like, arresting octaves.
Banks worships at the same temple of doom-sex as the Weeknd, with whom she has toured, but while her songs are deliberately sparse, they retain a certain opacity. It can seem like a rather vague, baked-in ache but her surprisingly demonstrative performance style – Banks stalks and prowls all over the stage – imbues them with weight. In this small venue, she can lock eye contact with fans who already seem to know all her lyrics by heart.
There are cheers for the spacey R&B of Brain and also for an acoustic version of her breakthrough track, Warm Water, that foregrounds her voice. It's a short set, under an hour, but it reconciles moments of fragility with appealing confidence, and bodes well for her forthcoming debut album.
It also includes two spectacularly successful covers. After a slinky retooling of Aaliyah's jittery classic Are You That Somebody?, Banks encores with the Weeknd's What You Need, a heavy-lidded slow jam that gets much of its frisson from ram-raiding an existing relationship. "Watch me knock your boots off," she croaks. Mission accomplished.
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by Graeme Virtue via Music: Electronic music | theguardian.com
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