BANKS – Brain
2014 · Directed by Barnaby Roper
106K Likes
Best comments
1.“BANKS makes me wanna sob, drink a whole bottle of rum, and then go slap the fuck out of my ex. God, I love her.”
More comments
- 2.“I saw a pole dancer on my Facebook page smoking a bong and dancing to this song, and now I'm obsessed.”
- 3.“OMG, I heard this on the pole dancer video! I'm going to tell everybody... like nearly EVERYONE ELSE in the comments.”
The story
BANKS is Jillian Banks, a Los Angeles singer with a dark, smoky take on pop and R&B. Brain dropped as a single in January 2014, produced by Shlohmo (Henry Laufer, who co-wrote it with her), and it later became the second single from her debut album Goddess that September. The FADER called it ghostly but empowered. Fair.
The video went to Barnaby Roper, a director who had worked with Kanye West, through Black Dog Films. It's black and white and mostly just her: moving in slow motion, singing straight into the lens, while kaleidoscope shapes and shiny glass fracture the frame around her. Roper piles on stutter effects and slow-mo as the song builds, and only near the end does color finally leak in.
No plot. No props worth mentioning. One woman, a broken mirror's worth of angles, and a stare that doesn't blink first.
