Banks Arcade, a New Zealand-born band that combines metal, electronic, and hip-hop genres to create their own unique sound, have finally sent SECOND PLACE SUPERSTAR out into the world. The album explores the long-standing underdog mentality the band has held, especially being from an area with limited music industry reach, and working through complex emotions and sonic structures that are interesting for all listeners.
We sat down with frontman Joshua O'Donnell to talk about releasing the album, hearing audiences sing along to songs they hadn't even heard yet (and songs they have), and the meaning behind SECOND PLACE SUPERSTAR for the band and for the people in their live show crowds.
SECOND PLACE SUPERSTAR is available everywhere after several months of teasing and dropping singles from the album. Banks Arcade performed the project in full at their live release parties in Melbourne on September 24 and Sydney on September 26, giving audiences a taste of what’s to come for the band as they prepare for their next tour alongside From Ashes to New.
For O’Donnell, that transition from making the album to letting other people experience it has brought a sense of relief more than anything else. “It feels great. I'm glad that people are able to listen to it, and it seems like they're enjoying it,” O’Donnell said. “It was one of those situations where I felt so happy with the album; all the boys felt happy with the album. So as much as I hoped people would like it, I was very detached from what happened. I was excited for people to be able to have the experience. I think it's gone wonderful so far.”
That experience has already extended beyond streaming platforms and into the live setting. When Banks Arcade began performing the album, one of the more unexpected reactions came from hearing audiences sing along to songs that had not even been released yet.
“I think when we played up in Sydney especially, it was crazy to hear that some people were singing the songs that we hadn't even put out yet,” O’Donnell said. “Because we'd been posting little reels and teasers of, like, the hooks and stuff, and that was definitely weird. Because I was like, ‘How in the world are they seeing this stuff?’ And then I was like, ‘Oh, you literally learned this from the reels,’ which is funny."
The reaction also showed O’Donnell something about the way listeners can experience a song now. Even when audiences had only heard pieces of the songs through social media, they were still willing to follow them into the rest of the track.
“I think people were hearing the hook in the first part of the song, and by the end, they were singing along,” he said. “Which, you know, that gave us a lot of confidence to feel like, ‘Oh, I think these songs might… might be able to resonate with people on a deeper level.’”
That connection is particularly significant for an album whose title comes from an identity Banks Arcade has embraced for years: the outsider, the underdog, and the person who isn't necessarily expected to come out on top. But SECOND PLACE SUPERSTAR isn't about being content with second place.
“Oh, I definitely don't think that,” O’Donnell said. “You know, I'm a competitive person. I want to win. I think the second place thing is just the idea of not necessarily being the first pick on the team and being more of like the ‘doing it for the people.’”
O’Donnell draws that idea from his involvement with martial arts, where the expected winner isn't always the person an audience becomes most invested in. “I follow and am involved with martial arts very closely, and I think that there are certain fighters who are the cream of the crop that come through, and, you know, they're always the favorite to win, and they're cool to watch, but everyone also loves the guy who's meant to lose but ends up, you know, having the big moments and shocking everyone,” he said.
For Banks Arcade, that underdog identity is also tied to where the band comes from. “And I think that that's kind of what we align with; being from small towns in a small country, it's hard to get ahead, and it's hard to make friends in this industry, and so we've always aligned with our underdog spirit, and that's where the name came from, really.”
That same idea of finding their own path carries through into the album's creative process. O’Donnell has previously described one of the biggest changes between Future Lovers, the band's debut album, and SECOND PLACE SUPERSTAR as having “better taste and better decision-making," while the band also took on more of the production themselves.
For O’Donnell, though, “better” isn't necessarily about making objectively superior musical decisions. “I think that it really is just aligning with what your own taste is,” he said. “Because if you think about, like, say, better decision-making or better taste, you know, everyone likes different things. So there is really nothing that's better than anything else. I think better means [to be] truer to yourself.”
That became particularly important as the band worked through the familiar problem of finishing a project and no longer feeling connected to the songs. “There's this common thing with artists, which I've experienced throughout my whole musical journey, which is that you get to the end of a project, and then you're like, ‘We don't really like these anymore. We've worked on them so much,’” O’Donnell said. “And I think that part of that is a drive to continue progressing and doing something better, but then part of that is potentially an issue with being able to find that alignment with what you really want to hear.”
For SECOND PLACE SUPERSTAR, that meant developing a stronger sense of what belonged on the album and what didn't. “I think that it was just having this one kind of palette to draw from, and even though it still is an eclectic album, trying to make the themes more aligned,” he said. “Without getting into the exact specifics of what that means, I think that it was just kind of hearing something and being like, ‘Does this align with the rest of the album and the feeling of it? Does this feel the same?’... It doesn't matter if it's kind of drawn from a different genre or if it's more intense,” O’Donnell said. “And I guess that that's something that's kind of abstract, like you can't really point to exactly what that means.”
That instinct led to some difficult decisions. Banks Arcade actually created four singles that ultimately didn't make it onto the album. “We had actually made four singles before the album that we never put out,” O’Donnell said. “And I think, you know, those are still really good songs. Like, I listen to them, and I'm like, ‘Man, those are really good,’ but they just didn't align with this project. Maybe they'll come out at a different point someday, but they just didn't align with this one.”
The writing on SECOND PLACE SUPERSTAR was closely personal to O’Donnell and involved a more collaborative relationship with drummer James Feekes, who also contributed significantly to the record's production and sonic direction. “I think a lot of it is personal for me,” O’Donnell said. “Until this album, I had really kind of written in a vacuum and done a lot of the stuff myself.” He continued to explain his writing process: “Sometimes I'll have an experience, and I'll extrapolate from that so it's not, you know, just the exact thing that happened to me. But it's kind of taking maybe an experience, you know, you think about, like, love songs or songs about loss."
These are experiences that happen to everyone, so it's a universal thing that humans feel, and that's why those songs connect on such a deep level to so many people.
Feekes' involvement in the production changed when and how the band approached the sonic side of the songs. “We built out a lot of the sonic landscape earlier, whereas in the past, we've kind of been like, ‘We'll make it like this, and then we'll make it better later,’ which can be a trap,” O’Donnell said.
Part of that realization came from trying to recreate moments from demos in a studio environment. “I think that sometimes you make something, and there is that raw good thing that you like out of the vocals that you get, and it's that lightning in a bottle, and it's hard to recreate that,” he said. “And so we realized that a lot of the times we've kind of got these guitar takes and got these vocal takes that I would do in my demos, and then we would try and recreate it all in a studio, and it would never really… it would never really have that same thing.”
Working with Feekes earlier in the process helped solve some of that problem. “He was baking in samples and sounds and giving me sounds to write with that made the process a lot easier,” O’Donnell said. “And I also upskilled a lot on my vocal recording and guitar recording, so that by the time we went to work with Sam, we got in the studio with him, and he was able to add that last, kind of, 15% of production stuff that really brought the album to life.”
There is another thread running through the album that connects back to the blend of genres between metal and hip-hop that Banks Arcade seeks to share. “There's also a lot of that same sort of underdog drive, almost like you hear on, like, early hip hop albums where I feel like the trajectory of a lot of hip hop artists is you kind of have the albums where they're like, ‘I'm fucking broke and I'm trying to make it out,’” O’Donnell said. “And then they have the albums where they're like, ‘I'm fucking rich, and I'm the man.’ And then, you know, so… and then they fall off again, and then it's just kind of that cycle of being down bad and up good.”
For Banks Arcade, that cycle has translated into a feeling that the band is putting everything it has into the present moment. “So, I think that there's a lot of that, like, we feel that this moment is our last shot and that we're giving it everything that we have,” O’Donnell said. “And I think that energy is through all of the different themes in the album.”
When asked about what success would look like for the band with SECOND PLACE SUPERSTAR and future releases, O’Donnell explained, "I mean, we have that intrinsic feeling of success from the music itself and from the shows that we get to play for our fans. And I think that that is… that's all that you can hope for, really, because at the end of the day, separate from the finances, it's really just the same thing, scaling.”
“Like, you know, once you have 250, 300 people who want to sing your songs back to you, and then you have 3,000 people, it's still the same weird experience of, like, ‘Oh, there's a whole bunch of people that are just here because they connect with this music,’” he continued. “And I think that as long as you can find that joy and that peace in doing it within yourself, then it doesn't really matter what happens on the outside. You just have to sort out how to pay rent.”
With SECOND PLACE SUPERSTAR out in the world, O’Donnell's biggest hope is simply that people connect with it. “I just hope that it invokes a strong emotion,” he said. “That's what I like from music; whether it's inspiration or whether it connects to an experience, I just like that intensity to come from music.”
He also talked about the physical release: “I hope that people enjoy it, and if they do enjoy it, they go pick up a physical copy, because we put a lot of work into making the physical copies look really sick.” And I have to agree; the physical merch and release have amazing designs.
SECOND PLACE SUPERSTAR may mark where Banks Arcade is now, but O’Donnell doesn't seem particularly interested in treating it as a finish line. There are songs that didn't make the album and the possibility of future standalone releases for those songs, as well as a band still trying to find a way to make music on its own terms. For now, the goal is simple: keep creating, keep playing, and keep finding the people who want to be there for it.
I think that as long as you can find that joy and that peace in doing it within yourself, then it doesn't really matter what happens on the outside.
SECOND PLACE SUPERSTAR Album on Spotify
