Look At Us Now Dad (Vinyl)
Look At Us Now Dad is Banoffee’s debut album, and it is an uplifting, hopeful journey that celebrates survival in the face of abuse and adversity. Featuring collaborations with SOPHIE, Empress Of, Cupcakke, Umru, and co-produced by Banoffee and Yves Rothman, it is an exciting musical hybrid of experimental club sounds and earworm pop. “Each song uses human experience to talk about more complex concepts of addiction, obsession, heartbreak, and resurrection,” says Banoffee. “Not to dwell in sadness, but to join hands.”
Across the album, the production’s textural emphasis on crunchy sounds and smooth transitions serves as a darker, more experimental foil to Banoffee’s narrative-driven lyrics and hook-laden melodies. “It’s an exciting time for pop music,” says Banoffee, who relishes her position at the border between avant-garde art and pop. The broadening of the popscape to include more radical and queer artists such as herself is heartening—and playing in Charli XCX’s band on the Taylor Swift tour taught her a lot about how pop brings people together. “Pop isn’t lyrically political like in the 60s,” she says, “but now, the existence of these avant-garde pop artists advocacy in itself. Our existence, and rise to the top is more political than we could put into words”
The album was written in the two years after the artist moved to Los Angeles from Melbourne in 2017, seeking a fresh start. Meticulously retracing her steps, Banoffee examined her life with a fine-toothed comb in order to reclaim her narrative and the struggles she’d once sung about in earlier releases. Look At Us Now, Dad thus tells a story of survival—of abuse, sadness, and loss—and is a testament to the possibilities of rebirth. As Banoffee puts it: “Each track is about a struggle and achievement that anyone could experience, the ones that seem so trivial. We’re all survivors for one reason or another.”
