Press

Alt 104.5 Philadelphia

February 11, 2022

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CRAIC Radio

February 10, 2022

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25 O'Clock

January 25, 2022

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Yo! That’s My Jawn

January 22, 2022

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Mix Tape Media

January 21, 2022

Seven years in the making, lyricist Joe Puleo and singer-songwriter Eli Wenger announce their collaboration in Bannister Effect and their debut LP, A Life I Knew due out January 21, 2022. The melodic folk-rock-pop-punk album is a meditation on the vagaries of life and one man's response to the vicissitudes he faced and is a collaboration borne of a deep friendship between kindred spirits, Puleo and Wenger. The album is a mosaic of related songs that begin with a divorce and explore themes of love, death, self-acceptance and reemergence. Much like a novel, each song tells part of the narrator’s journey and ultimate rebirth – a true evolution of one soul, told in a manner that is relatable on many levels. Instruments, themes and sounds repeat themselves across multiple songs to evoke the people, situations, and emotions they are tied to – much like a psychedelic Peter and the Wolf.

“Every song starts with a poem that Joe wrote and then I sort of deconstruct and reconstruct it; adding my own perspectives, helping to make points cleaner and clearer, and improving the way a thought comes across more naturally for me to sing as a song,” explains Wenger. “The record begins with a divorce and tells the story of a narrator that is something of a cross between Joe and I -- I think of them as a character as they’re not me or Joe exactly, but somehow based on us. The first eight songs tell the story of a failed relationship that leads to feelings of anger, hurt, regret, jealousy, and inner conflict. Ultimately though, it becomes about learning to accept oneself, live presently in the moment, and put away the past. Songs nine through eleven deal with our narrator confronting their mortality, dying, entering into the afterlife to rid themself of ego once and for all; only to be reborn, brand spanking new.”