Produced at Reel Love Recording Company by Bankhead and Patrick Himes, “Something That I Can’t Explain” was released in June, with a studio-centric cinéma vérité music video (dir. Rachel Rosen) premiering a few weeks later. The standalone single comes two years after Bankhead’s cathartic and vulnerable six-song EP, “I Am Experienced,” which explores the Black experience from Bankhead’s perspective, with all-Black personnel — musicians, art directors, videographers — making it happen.
There is a noticeable tone shift, sonically and otherwise, from the heaviness of his 2023 concept album to this new single. Recording “Something That I Can’t Explain” in 2022, he held onto the song as to not taint the messaging of the EP. But two years later, Bankhead feels confident about the space cushion.
Pulling from his deep love for powerpop, “Something That I Can’t Explain” is Bankhead’s attempt at writing a Fountains of Wayne song. Harmonically simple and in a major key, he leaned into the influence of one of his musical heroes, late-FoW bassist Adam Schlesinger, and wrote a catchy song with melancholy underpinnings and a bridge that matters.
Bankhead has emulated Fountains of Wayne in the past, and has been under the influence of other powerpop notables, like Superdrag, too. For the latest single, he hired Failure drummer and professional session musician Kellii Scott to lay down the pastiche’s rhythm section from his Los Angeles home. On top, Daniel Griffin tracked layers of chipper synths and other keys. Bankhead played the basslines and some dirty guitar in the second verse — the only guitar he ever committed to song. He also had pre-DDN music writer Brandon Berry play the main guitars.
(It should be explicitly noted that this writer does not get any royalty kickbacks or benefit from the song’s promotion in any way. It should also be noted that the first music-centric article he ever wrote was about Mike Bankhead, who introduced him to the Dayton music scene early on. It was not a very flattering article.)
Many of Bankhead’s songs are lyrically depressing, sometimes furthering those raw emotions with minor keys. But his most effective ones mask their bitterness behind a wall of levity. “Something That I Can’t Explain” is an example of the latter.
“When I’m at my best, this is probably what my music sounds like,” he said. “The bridge is meant to make you think, but it’s almost meant to make you laugh.”
The concept of knowledge is a motif in Bankhead’s music. The bridge he’s referring to — with lyrics that make up the opening paragraph of this story — contains the word “sophistry,” likely the only time in the history of pop music that sophistry is used in a song. In 2022’s “Hold the Wick,” he calls back to high school physics with the phrase “capillary action.” There’s even a reference to Schrödinger’s Cat in his song “Heliocentric.”
Bankhead finds that the unexplainable can be fascinating. So even if dictionaries must sometimes be consulted to appreciate the nuances of his music, maybe it’s that fact that makes the concepts he explores so interesting.
He says that “Something That I Can’t Explain” is self-explanatory, and that’s understandable to a certain extent. So even if it is “too bad” and “so sad” and that it’s “driving me mad” that Mike Bankhead can’t explain everything, generally mentioning the very things that confuse us about life can make us feel less alone.
“I think that all of us who make art have to make it for ourselves first before we consider external factors,” Bankhead said. “But there is something communal about singing in a room full of people. There’s no better feeling than… well, there are a few really, really good… but no better feeling than one, people paying attention, and two, people expressing to you later that the song has meant something to them, or helped them. It’s pretty great.”
A clichéd one chord drones in the song’s outro. It’s very rock and roll, and it’s very Fountains of Wayne. That’s the one thing that Mike Bankhead did explain to me.
Brandon Berry writes about the Dayton and Southwest Ohio music and art scene. Have a story idea for him? Email branberry100@gmail.com.
MORE INFO
Listen to Mike Bankhead’s “Something That I Can’t Explain” on all streaming platforms. It can be purchased at Bandcamp.com.
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