Banks & Steelz — Anything but Words

Collaborative studio album between Interpol singer Paul Banks and Wu-Tang Clan member RZA. The production is almost exclusively handled by the two under the moniker Banks & Steelz, along with John Hill, Kid Harpoon, Andrew Wyatt and Ari Levine. The guests are Kool Keith, Florence Welch and the MCs of Wu-Tang Ghostface Killah, Method Man and Masta Killa.

The album starts well, RZA's rap is tired and meager, Banks's singing is bland and limp, the production lifts the first two tracks, which are also the best without guests. Then the album falls, wobbles, stutters and staggers after the third track: it's no coincidence that this happens with the arrival of Kool Keith, who in 2012 sounds as if he were on the verge of an imminent retirement. Production quality drops to the bottom, RZA has never sounded good and no longer finds the decent rap of the first eight minutes, while Banks continues to trim stretched and whining pop hooks.

You expect this effort, made by artists who have repeatedly reached the top ten of the pop chart, to be at least a best-seller, but it also disappoints in that respect. Despite being released by major Warner Bros., the album wanders halfway through the charts, Billboard doesn't know what this product is and passes it between alternatives, rap and rock standings, without being able to enter the top ten, not even in the UK rnb chart, where the only one of the six singles extracted manages to enter box 74. The union between the singer and the rapper in this dull, forced and senseless attempt to do indie rock rap is recommended by the manager of RZA. There isn't much inspiration behind the project, and you can hear it in these twelve tracks. It takes three years to put the album together, and in the end, it sounds incomplete and uneven, full of boring tracks printed with the mold: "Love and War" and "Point of View" stand out thanks to the guests, the Shaolin rappers who arrive with their Hattori Hanzō swords to cut these beats. Released four years after their respective last solo efforts, this tape is excessively long at 55 minutes, it's sparse, random and forgettable, not recommended. 4.5/10.