FI REVIEWS: Banff - Flood (EP, 2026)
Raleigh college rock band overdelivers with debut EP available on homemade cassette
Among the deluge of worthy music released every day, Flood is a handle you can grab onto. But as a debut DIY EP by an unknown college band, it would be easy to let it go too quickly.
A quartet of childhood friends, Banff have been playing these songs live for years. It was late 2025 when they finally recorded five songs, and, in May 2026, they released the collection online and as a homemade cassette or home-burned CD. Engineered by Max Gowan at Found After Dark, a small studio in Raleigh, NC, it sounds good.
Aside from the guitar feedback textures that hint at the depth to come, the eponymous opening track starts off as any unassuming college rock band’s song might, with a chipper riff and simple beat. Lead singer Tom Cascone’s tenor voice comes in, crisply and clearly, with an idiosyncratic though unmistakably young edge. The lyrics are of the classic psychedelic tradition with some rich, metaphorical imagery (“The crack in the dam is widening / … the mountain will become a shore”), and some spacey pre-choruses with a piano texture and soft ride cymbal evoke the Chris Cohen school of 2010s throwback to 60s psychedelia in a lo-fi bedroom recording. It’s all fine — good, even — but not unexpected. Then the song devolves into a slow and heavy doom throwdown, and the dim hint of the feedback at the start goes full glare as the washed-out slow double-stop bends on the guitar over the pounding toms beam into our imagination a vision of the flood breaking the dam, and we’re like, oh shit, this band rules, what the hell is happening.
Next is Chester, a bouncy but grungy tune that showcases bassist James Colone’s talent for catchy melodic lines. The band drives along, tambourine in tow, through verses and choruses and a guitar solo reminiscent of Sum 41’s Dave Baksh rising out of the swimming pool in the video for In Too Deep. The song then undergoes a genre metamorphosis, emerging as post-rock for its climactic jam. Through effective sonic foreshadowing and granting the spectral space-time for new ideas to develop, the band avoids making this song feel all over the place. Instead, it’s a satisfying journey that starts as a bop and ends as a post-rock rainstorm. What probably also helps is that the intro, again, hinted at where the song would end up. That’s good songwriting.
New Moon starts with a jaunty riff and gets into some jazzy business with a few catchy delights, particularly when the whole band pauses for a beat then kicks back in together. Everybody loves that. Tom really comes out vocally on this one, melodically bridging across sections with sophistication. The song wraps mid-transition, going right into…
Stay. The distinctive Cure-like synth lead that Tom plays with his right foot on his pedal keyboard joins James’s high bass line and the layered stereo strumming guitars to evoke an atmosphere like when you’ve stayed up all night and now the birds are out and you gotta make it home. The verse comes in with a grounding bass, revealing the key we’ve been in the whole time. It’s a harmonic surprise that gives a sense of resolution mirroring the lyrics’ affirmation of bravery in the face of a breakup. The lyrical content is sweet, if solipsistic: characteristic of much young male heartbreak writing, the “she” in the story exists only as a prop catalyzing the narrator’s angst. And I already critiqued the lyrics’ rhyming couplets forcing unnatural vocabulary in my original roundup. But Tom’s voice is bold, reaching a high, sustained note at the pivotal moment before the song’s instrumental final act. Here the guitar solo is psychedelic but somewhat timid compared to the others on the album. Still, it builds with the band to an effective climax, after which the instrumental subsides with more trippy stuff, more synth lead, and more soloing over a long denouement that’s earned by the track’s two major catharses over its just-under-6-minute runtime.
The EP closes with Throw Me Around Like a Doll, which comes on with a pensive and sweat-inducing beat like you have reason to suspect yourself of a crime you can’t remember committing. Then the song blasts off in a full-stereo, full-spectrum rocket with some of the band’s best riffing, evoking the best Smashing Pumpkins licks. Tom takes a more spoken-word register over the interrogative beat that alternates with the ripping chorus. Backing vocals ahh over the chorus, elevating the track from banger to certified banger. It’s a strong closer to a great first DIY EP.
Flood is available as a homemade cassette or home-burned CD and for streaming on Bandcamp.
Check out my interview with Banff lead singer and guitarist Tom Cascone: