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Review: 'Black Bananas'
'Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, 10th November 2014'   


-  Genre: 'Rock'

Our Rating:
If Iggy Pop struggles to pay his mortgage, how does a band like Black Bananas manage eat? Over from the USA and playing the Brudenell’s games room while Truckfighters are on in the main room to 50 or so people with a £7 cover charge, the economics is challenging at best.

Keeping the kit to a minimum no doubt helps: a trio comprising synths, guitar and tiny plug-in bits such as smartphone apps and no drum kit means they can at least travel light and without the need for a big tour bus or van or crew.

Not that Black Bananas are in it for the money. If they were, they’d be doing something a hell of a lot more accessible. Part way through the set, at which point Jennifer Herremer’s spent more time interacting with her own shadow on the stage backdrop and on her knees fumbling with said bits of kit than anything else, I found myself pondering the style of their performance. Contrast Herremer’s stage attire with the mainstream vogues: straw-like hair hanging down, bursting from a baseball cap pulled so low as to obscure her face, an oversized sports shirt, tight jeans, faded and worn to holes, and a large plaid flannel shirt tied around her waist, all finished with some crocodile skin boots. It’s as far from the glamour of the celebrity singers who grace the covers of the glossies and tabloids. And instead of making positive affirmations and inciting the audience to make some noise, she just sings a bit, barely audibly. The songs, scuzzy and half-baked sounding on record, are barely discernible in a sea of noise emanating from the speakers while images flash and flicker behind the three people on stage. Where’s the engagement? Where’s the performance? Where are the tunes?

And then it clicked. In a world where the roles and styles of performers are so defined by media, polished to airbrushed perfection, sequenced and lip-synched to sterile flawlessness, a band like Black Bananas is the antidote. Moreover, it’s the antithesis. Quite simply, it’s the anti.

As ‘Physical Emotions’ grinds out of the PA, the importance of their semi-parodic disco-funk rock racket is clear. Yes, there’s thought behind the not-giving-a-fuck approach that sounds like they’ve barely rehearsed and stoner cool demeanor, but at the same time they’re doing what comes naturally to them: you can’t manufacture this shit. And that’s precisely why it’s cool.
  author: Christopher Nosnibor

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Black Bananas - Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, 10th November 2014