About 40 miles from the coast. The fog hasn't lifted and it's been drizzling all day and doesn't look like it's going to stop. Banashee — Niamh, Maren and Vesper — are huddled around a mixing console that glows like a small city, pulling apart a take of "I Must Know You." A photographer drifts along the edge of the room, mostly forgotten. Which, it turns out, is exactly the point.
"People are always saying we're so '90s — like we sound like some '90s band," Niamh says, and shrugs. "And I'm always like, well — what's wrong with that? Who cares? It's fun."
It isn't an accident. "We're all kind of stuck in the '90s," she goes on, "and to us that was the best period ever for music. Everything we listen to, everything we play, it comes out '90s anyway. So why not just ride it?"
"That's true," Maren says.
"Well — what's wrong with that? Who cares? It's fun."Niamh
Vesper — who produces the band, and tends to notice how things get built — has her own read on the pictures. "One thing we think is super weird, and I guess keeps being weird, is having a professional photographer follow you around and then have the images pretend they're impromptu — when really the shots are set up so carefully." She half-smiles. "Which is pretty '90s too, honestly. But the truth is, he's an amazing photographer. He ended up shooting us when we thought he was still setting up. So it's as organic and natural as it gets." A beat. "It's just not taken on a cell phone."
Maren's favorites are the ones that don't pretend at all — "the shots where it actually is professional, and looks professional, from inside the studio."
That's partly because, once the work starts, the band tends to disappear into it. "You're so focused on getting it right that you don't even notice there's a guy in the room snapping away — burst shots, like fifty photos a second," Maren says. "It's funny how you lose track of what's right in front of you when you're locked in on the music. There could've been jungle cats in here." She laughs. "At least I wouldn't have noticed."
Niamh points across the room at her. "Maren's the biggest space cadet. She blocks everything out — she'll keep singing after we've stopped for lunch, after it's time to go home."
"Yeah, that's kind of me," Maren admits. "I've always been like that. Not just with music."
"There could've been jungle cats in here. At least I wouldn't have noticed."Maren
Of everything they've made, Niamh thinks the lead single wears its decade most openly. "'I Must Know You' is more '90s than anything else we've done. It reminds me of Garbage, and Hole — all those '90s female-fronted bands." She turns it over. "I love them. But if I'm honest, objectively? We kind of do sound like that. Especially on that one."
Where it goes wrong, all three agree, is when they reach for something that isn't theirs. "The worst stuff is when we try to be something we're not," Niamh says. "When we try to write modern, it's just… not good." All three of them laugh.
Vesper, quiet for most of the afternoon, has the last word on those experiments. "I don't know if they're terrible," she says. "But I definitely don't like them as much as the other stuff."
