BANNY GROVE – CARS IN CONTROL

Sometimes it takes a post-human character to stir the humanity in a citizen of the 21st century. Sometime there’s no better role model than a woman in a wig, pointing down the path of righteousness with big, caricature-ized gestures. Louise Chicoine’s alter-ego BANNY GROVE burst onto the scene in 2016, like a toon ripping thru the thin fabric of Los Angeles reality, and immediately found a devoted following of fans who uphold the fictional diva as some kind of messiah of loving neighborliness, or the Mary Poppins of DIY. Her debut full-length Who Is She? introduced Banny’s uniquely candid vocal delivery, that skips between talky honesty and operatic ebullience, and her palette of punchy 80’s drum machines and glittering, artificial, Nickelodeon-esque synth patches. Guitarist Peter Nichols’s arrangements include sections of Prince-ly funkiness and Elfman-y goofiness, as well as a healthy dose of the odd-metered prog futurism we came to expect from his prior outfit Grape Room. In her first year on Earth, Banny has toured to 9 countries and opened for such stars as Cherry Glazerr, Ian Sweet, and Palberta. Wherever she goes, she flies through the scene with the untiring energy of a person who’s not the least bit confused about her purpose as a songwriter, a performer, and (as co-founder of Nicey Music) a culture-shaper: simply to spread the law of kindness as far as she can. Now Banny Grove is returning with an EP of 5 very ambitious songs – Cars in Control – written and reworked obsessively over a hectic and disastrous year. The title track ridicules the absurdity of ‘the oil man’ while dreaming of a clean energy future, and “Trash Truck” is sung from the optimistic perspective of a child living underground when the surface world is an unseen desert of garbage. “Baby” and “The Manger” preach the importance of self-esteem, first in a contemporary mode and then in an utterly deconstructed composition of off-kilter 808s and orchestral pads. And “Dogs FM” employs a futuristic power-pop groove to imagine a media outlet with canine innocence. Through it all, Louise confronts the senselessness of our modern world with a clown’s unshakable goofiness and goodwill, and a visionary idealism that’s all her own.