Banks & Steelz: Anything But Words review – slick rap-rock, like Interpol meeting the Wu-Tang Clan

Banks & Steelz … AKA Interpol’s Paul Banks and the Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA.

Wu-Tang Clan badass RZA and Interpol frontman Paul Banks began writing together in 2011, and this, their eventual album, doesn’t sound unlike what you’d imagine Interpol smooshed with Wu-Tang Clan to sound like. There’s 70s lounge-funk (Conceal), OutKast stylings (Giant) and guest verses from Kool Keith (Sword in the Stone), Ghostface Killah (Love + War) and Florence Welch (on the Lana Del Rey-ish woozy cowbell-pop track Wild Season), like a retro-futuristic soundtrack to a canned Baz Luhrmann gangster film.

And yet songs such as Speedway Sonora are surely just Interpol offcuts: the very same guitar sound and detached broodiness, only with RZA’s hard-hitting raps on top. No doubt this was a dream come true for Banks, who once used to spin hip-hop as DJ Fancypants. But, while its slick production makes it more subtle than rap-rock alliances past, it comes off like a bid to musically supervise the next hit HBO drama. If that sounds great, walk this way, but mind the unrelentingly average songs as you go.