Review: BANNERS’ ‘I Wish I Was Flawless, I’m Not’ EP flies into orbit

Michael Nelson sculpts his lyrics with a glistening, razor-sharp pickaxe. He shakes loose the deepest human reveries, laces them up with starstruck production, and tosses them into orbit, landing somewhere just outside Pluto. Going by BANNERS in his work, the singer-songwriter mashes together chewy pop hooks with refreshing musicality, funneling real instruments into his arrangements that make everything feel full and replenishing. His viral smash, “Someone to You,” is a testament to his songwriting adeptness, so it’s not surprising the song has wracked up 642 million streams to-date. Three years later, the songwriter finds himself worming deeper into his storytelling for an EP packed with urgency and emotional high-spending. I Wish I Was Flawless, I’m Not bares the darkness nestled inside each and everyone one of us, shining an incandescent warmth on blemishes and bruises imprinted on our being.

“You’re perfectly broken for me,” he casts a soul-rending confession into the night sky. The opening track, “Perfectly Broken,” primes the listener for the lyrically-galvanized, oftentimes revelatory, trek ahead. Nelson’s voice has a suppleness, too, that never relinquishes the cracks and feathered edges necessary to impart tidbits about life, love, hope, and personal struggles. “Easy,” containing a crescendo worthy of the Piano Man, taps into ripe sentimentality without becoming overwrought or saccharine. In fact, it’s stunningly raw and beautiful. “I was so sad, and the road was so fucking long,” he confides. Unpacking his turmoil, he turns attention to a love, a salve, a redemption that has washed it all away. And he emerges clean for the firs time in a very long time.

I Wish I Was Flawless, I’m Not whisks the listener away from the here and now. Nelson invites the listener into his world, if only for a few songs, and we, too, become cleansed in the process. With “Happier,” Nelson wrings his hands over the deterioration of a once-blossoming romance, and each thorn sticks out of his skin, blood poring down his elbows. “We’re on the same street, but in a different town,” he sings. He bears witness to the pain, almost like a sacrifice on the altar of self-reliance and absolution. But he never avoids the truth. He’s nailed it to his heart, in fact. “If you’re true to yourself, would you be happier with somebody else?” he asks.

The EP pumps and boils and erupts with the closing epoch. “That you’re always left outside lookin’ in / ‘Cause the way that the world keeps spinnin’ / How could anyone call this livin’?” he ponders. Love unrequited or simply unfulfilled is the one of the biggest tragedies a human can experience in their lifetime. But feeling the world crushing on his shoulders, Nelson eyes a lover who could make him whole again. “We could disappear,” he considers, desperately longing for an escape from the current way of things. “All of your edges fit right into mine,” he later sings before reminding us that literally “everyone’s broken.” We’re all broken, so why not love and live fearlessly.

Nelson’s heart is on fire. And I Wish I Was Flawless, I’m Not is a letter scrawled on tattered paper in bold lettering and tiny little exclamation points. As far as under-appreciated storytellers go, BANNERS is first in line.

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