Yulissa Benitez
It’s opening night at the theater for Isaac Dunbar, but the singer isn’t racked with stage fright. The 19-year-old pop musician has written himself into the lead role in Banish The Banshee, his latest theatrical EP chronicling transformative moments in his life. He’s already lived the whole story. When the curtains rise, he’ll have his lines memorized like the back of his hand.
“All of the songs are supposed to be parables, essentially, that are told from the perspective of this Banshee character that I created, who is a sort of higher self version of me – a person who is very wise and discerning and knows everything,” Dunbar tells The FADER. The singer has long used storytelling as a learning device, but donning the mask of his rebellious alter ego across eight songs on Banish The Banshee offered a chance to embark on a journey of inner healing. The process was less than linear and includes some stumbles through self-sabotage along the way.
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Twirling through a harmonic wonderland on “Bleach,” Dunbar showcases a boundless vocal and production range while proving that, shamelessly, the Banshee will do anything for attention. Later, on “Fool’s Paradise,” twinkling synths color a story of bribery and deception as a means of brief romantic distraction. Elsewhere, on “Money On That,” he wears his ego like a security blanket. All the while, Dunbar’s vocal gymnastics craft a compelling narrative laying out the character arc of a villain whose biggest battle is internal.
The over-the-top, pompous confidence throughout the record works as a fool-proof cover up for a hyper-critical artist whose greatest motivator stemmed from his dissatisfaction with his past releases. “I was very insecure and I thought my voice sucked ass,” he admits. “I started taking vocal lessons and that changed my life because I can now access parts of my voice that I didn’t know I could. I guess my ideas for vocal arrangements and harmonies have gotten a bit more ambitious.”
Below, Dunbar tells The FADER about the theatrical journey of creating Banish The Banshee, learning to embrace collaboration while writing and producing his own music, and pushing himself to a breaking point in order to begin healing internally.
The FADER: Banish The Banshee is very Shakesperian in nature, you can practically see it being performed as you’re listening. How did you begin to conceptualize this world for your alter ego to live in?
Isaac Dunbar: The concept of Banish the Banshee didn't come until the very end of creating the record. I had all these songs, every song except for “Banish the Banshee,” until one day I watched The Sound of Music for the first time – and I was gagged. I stayed up for two days straight, truly, I did not sleep. And I created that song, hunched over in my bed and created this whole concept. The song is supposed to be a play about my life. There's an intermission. It's five minutes long, it's very dramatic and spill the beans on my life.
All of the songs are supposed to be parables, essentially, that are told from the perspective of this Banshee character that I created. A sort of higher self version of me – a person who is very wise and discerning and knows everything. In all of these parables, I essentially teach lessons through the songs – all the lessons that the Banshee has been through that created who he is. And he's learned from all of his lessons from “Sunburn” all the way down to “Fool’s Paradise.” And then in “Banish the Banshee,” he finally gives his villain arc where all these certain behaviors that he engages in throughout the songs come from.
What do you learn about yourself as you’re scouring the past to make a project that builds around these significant moments in your life?
Oh, so many things, I would say the first thing is really, I don't want to get too deep, but inner child work. Low-key, writing all these songs really was healing. Some songs are satire where I make fun of myself, some songs are just direct and tell a story. I've learned a lot about my inner child through writing these songs. I've learned a lot about myself and who I am on more of a soul level. As I've grown up, I've sort of detached from certain parts of my inner child. And I've been learning to embrace more of the things that I don't like about myself, or didn't like about my inner child, because this whole record is about my past. I really want new listeners and people that have been following me for a long time to get a better sense of where I come from.
What makes that alter ego distinction important when you’re writing as your current self but speaking through this aspiring version of yourself and these different masks?
You see the picture fully. It's very easy for me to do a lot of things with the alter ego. I can go in many directions that I couldn't as quote unquote Isaac because of this set of rules that I set for myself. And this alter ego, Banshee, has a certain sonic palette that it wants to stick with, a certain vocal style, certain outfits – everything. I'm obsessed with creating worlds, I always have been. That's why I started making music, because it would suck me into my own personal world. It was my form of escapism. Now, I can do it with alter egos and eras in music.
Through this internal reflection, the Banshee becomes this hyper-rebellious character. Where does that characterization come from?
It comes from being restrained for so long, it's only natural. I explore a lot of these themes very carefully. And I tread carefully because personally, I was raised very strict Christian – and a lot of values that are with that don't really run parallel with my life a hundred percent of the time. In that, and also just growing up in a very small town, it causes the kid to snap. And I think I snapped. And I think it's normal to snap. The degree of which you do depends, but I think that rebellion, and exploring and finding things out for yourself – trial and error –is a part of life, and you have to learn lessons. It's only normal. Accepting the brokenness is really good and then the next step is healing.
How did you know which moments you were going to return to for these songs?
A lot of my songwriting process, personally, I let things flow out of me and I don't know how it comes out. And whenever I write about something, usually I have one lyric in mind. For example, I'm thinking about my song “Money On That,” that song is all about emotional detachment. In that song, I sound very pompous and very selfish – and it's all under the guise of using emotional detachment as a coping mechanism to protect myself from getting too attached or getting my heart broken. In that theme, I wrote about a bunch of stuff and I saw through the Banshee's lens: “Why are you writing about these things? Why are you writing about ‘Take it slow, mess around, lose control? / I bet my money on that’? Why are you so arrogant right now? Where does this come from?” So in that, I have to go to the past. All the songs sort of unfolded themselves. And I got to learn more about myself and why I do certain things through the lens of this Banshee, a sort of omnipresent being who is me and is also looking over me.
How do your goals differ going into a project like this in comparison to your past releases?
I'm gonna be just really honest, I wasn't really into my old music that much. When I first started writing Banish the Banshee, I was struck with a wave of insecurity, feeling like I wasn't the artist that I wanted to be. A lot of the goals for this project stemmed from that. I put a lot of pressure on myself, because that's just how I naturally am. I unfortunately am a little bit of a perfectionist and sometimes that bites me in the ass. A lot of the goals were self induced, to be honest, because I love to push myself, I want to see myself outdo myself. But also on a deeper level, I wanted to make something that I would be proud of when I'm in my twenties, listening back to these records and being like, okay, this is cool music, I really like it.
There are moments on this record that put me in the mind of Prince, not in a derivative way, but more within your confidence and delivery. What were the sonic reference points that allowed you to tap into that?
I listened to a lot of the Brits during the creation of Banish the Banshee. I listened to Bowie and Elton John a lot, and also Gaga. When I think about them, I get very excited. And with Prince, I'm going to be honest, I haven't listened to a ton of his discography. But what I have heard, I totally know what you mean, with the influence of how it feels and that sort of feminine energy. Something that I really had to tackle in recent years is my balance between masculinity and femininity, and how much of that I want to share with the world. With Banish the Banshee, I completely threw that out of the bag and I did not think about that. I just let myself be myself and I think it shines through. I'm happy that you said that.
What has been your process of transitioning more largely into the role of a producer and being less reliant on your collaborators?
That's been something that I've been learning a lot, too – learning that I do drive the boat. I've always been someone that knows what I want and with this record I really did get down to the nitty gritty. Six out of seven of the songs I started by myself in my room, hunched over in the bed like a hunchback. But it's really important for me to be involved with how things sound because like I said before, I am a perfectionist. And I guess past experiences of me working with people, and not liking the results has triggered perfectionism in me.
It's definitely very helpful, because I know what I want and I can do it. But I have recently found, at times, my perfectionism bites me in the ass. I have recently embraced collaboration more. I'm trying to find the beauty in collaboration because I love talking to people, I love working with people. But I found that, at times, I'd be either really shy in the room, or wouldn't say any ideas. I felt shut down – not because anybody was shutting me down, I would just get in my own head. And of course, there's certain people that I love to work with. And I've been learning by hearing other people's melodies, for example, if I'm writing with a songwriter, or seeing how somebody else produces a song.
With Banish the Banshee, I thought that all the songs were finished – the ones that I produced by myself. But I decided to hand over the project files to an amazing producer named JT Daly and he embellished the songs. For example, [on] “Sunburn,” he added some really cool acoustic drums to the chorus. I think that I'm just on a journey of finding collaborators and finding the balance of how much I want to do it myself. But I really do love producing music for myself. I find that the best stuff that I put out comes from when I do it myself in my room.
