An indie psychedelic pop/rock band with sharply-written songs, jazz-inspired guitar solos, saxophone textures, and grooves that nod to the dance floor, they've spent nearly a decade evolving their sound. That fusion reaches a new peak with Bad Luck, a restless and unapologetically diverse album that captures a celebrated band chasing down new horizons.
For years, Banshee Tree's evolution took place not in the recording studio, but onstage. A weekly residency at a speakeasy in Boulder, Colorado, gave the musicians an opportunity to reach beyond their origins as a swing band, while the addition of new members — including veterans of Denver's funk and punk-rock scenes — helped broaden the group's influences. Banshee Tree began gigging in other cities, too, busking with street performers in New Orleans and sharing late-night jam sessions with bands in the Pacific Northwest. Before long, their fusion of acoustic and electric styles had grown so wide that Banshee Tree could play virtually anywhere: dubstep festivals in California, EDM bills in Colorado, and bluegrass shows with genre-benders like Leftover Salmon and The Infamous Stringdusters.
Creating Bad Luck
To create Bad Luck — the band's most fully-realized record to date, arriving five years after their self-titled debut — Banshee Tree combined those strengths as a live act with an emphasis on lyrical depth and a newfound willingness to experiment in the recording studio.
"We wanted to bring to focus the sound of how the four of us play live. We built the songs like that, then spent a lot of time decorating the space with as much sonic interest as we could, without losing or overshadowing the core. Synth arrangements, grand piano, choruses of layered voices, and guest appearances by our dear friends Andy Thorn and Nick Carter helped bring the songs to a complete place." — Thom LaFond, guitarist, lead vocalist, producer, and founding member
During the recording process, Banshee Tree's longtime violinist left the lineup and was replaced by saxophonist Jesse Shantor. Bad Luck includes contributions from both musicians, showcasing a mix of past and present. "It felt like the end of one era and the beginning of another," says drummer and harmony vocalist Michelle Pietrafitta, who joined the band in 2017. "Thom went very deep not only into his songwriting, but into production, too. We all reimagined our own sound to reach a whole new place."
That reimagined place springs to life with songs like "Stellar Jay Theme," a gorgeous instrumental that makes room for acoustic guitar, strings, woodwinds, and hypnotic soundscapes of gauzy synth. The song marks a passing of the baton, nodding to an older era of the band while heralding the start of something new, too.
Nature & The Human Experience
Elsewhere, Thom's lyrics focus on the connection between nature and the human experience. "Softly inspired by the banshee myth, we imagined the cry coming not from a spirit, but from the land itself," he says. "These songs move through tension, decay, and beauty, all surrounding the moment where something feels wrong and you have to decide how you respond. When bad luck is coming, what moves do we make?"
In "Look High Over the Mountain," the song's homesick narrator finds security and mindfulness in the scenery that surrounds him. In "Company of Crows," he listens to the warning signs provided by nature's darker forces. On the campfire-worthy "Glue," featuring fiery fretwork from Leftover Salmon's banjo player Andy Thorn, he nods to Colorado's bluegrass tradition while evoking the thrill of the great outdoors.
It's impossible to separate Bad Luck from the landscape that spawned it. "Company of Crows" and "Stars Above the Lightning" conjure up the cool, blue cold of a late-night Rocky Mountain sky, while tracks like "Bright Blue Light" are defiantly sunny with their four-on-the-floor tempo, pulsing bass lines (courtesy of bandmate Jason Bertone), and festival-friendly sweep. It's a wide mix, glued together by a band of Centennial State songwriters who've always embraced the ambiguous borderlines between genres. Here, Banshee Tree make those grey areas their own, showing just how colorful they can be.
"I loved getting familiar with Banshee Tree's secret new underground sound — the stuff audiences hadn't experienced yet. In the studio, Thom would sometimes just let me lay sax tracks over the whole track, often leaving me alone in the booth to generate ideas. Then we would come together and work on ideas one by one and see what was fitting best into the existing arrangements." — Jesse Shantor, saxophonist (joined 2024)
Sculpting the Sonics
The studio experimentation didn't stop there. For Michelle's vocal parts, as many as 50 performances would be layered together across the stereo field. "We'd yell our lines at different walls in the studio room to hear how they sounded," LaFond remembers. "We'd whisper lines, too. We took our time to truly sculpt the sonics. I think of recording as making a painting, because you have to do a lot of underpainting. You build layers. You slowly develop your ideas. You record something, then you sit with it and determine whether those textures are serving the songs — then, after you've added everything, you decide what you want to take out."
Bad Luck is a manmade album about nature: its power, its fragility, and the warning signs it delivers to those who disrespect its importance. That theme is present in the album's cover art. Created by fellow musician Katie Mintle, the cover shows a mountain looming high above a sandy landscape. Thin rivers snake their way across the ground as an abandoned canoe sits against a rock, unable to continue its watery journey.
"This album and its cover art represent where we are as a band. When the trip gets rough, what do you do? Do you choose to go deeper into the next stage of your journey, or do you run for land? We've learned that what's perceived as bad luck can often be a transition point into something more beautiful, and that's what we're chasing after." — Michelle Pietrafitta, drummer and harmony vocalist
More beautiful, indeed. With Bad Luck, Banshee Tree are in full bloom.