Exclusive Interview: Reeya Banerjee

Feature

5 Sept

Reeya Banerjee’s This Place isn’t just an album—it’s a map. Not the kind you fold up and toss in a glove compartment, but the kind you keep revisiting, because every time you look at it you see a new landmark, a new emotional marker, a new stretch of road you somehow missed before. It’s a record that blurs the personal and the universal, tracing the coordinates of heartbreak, resilience, and belonging through the lens of literal geography.

Every song is rooted in a place Reeya has lived—New York, upstate towns, transitional cities that shaped her adulthood—and that conceit could have easily been a gimmick in lesser hands. But here, it feels organic, even inevitable. The songs flow like journal entries that just happen to come with killer hooks. Her background as a writer and storyteller shows everywhere: these tracks don’t just tell you what happened, they show you, placing you right in the memory.

Musically, This Place is more expansive and ambitious than her 2022 debut The Way Up. Where that record leaned on the intimacy of pandemic-era collaboration, this one bursts out with a fuller, more cinematic palette, co-created in-person with longtime collaborator Luke Folger and captured with warmth at Lorien Sound Recording Studios in Brooklyn. You hear it in the textures: jagged guitar stabs, chiming arena-rock riffs, swelling arrangements, and moments where her voice—equal parts raw edge and soaring clarity—pushes right through the mix like a beam of light.

The singles give you a sense of the album’s emotional breadth. “Misery of Place” is all sharp corners and catharsis, a jagged rocker about the way childhood memories can sting when seen through adult eyes. “For the First Time” shifts gears into a slower, more tender space—a love song about beginnings, both romantic and personal, shimmering with hope. “Runner” sprints on post-grunge urgency, its heartbeat rhythm perfectly mirroring the survival instinct of urban life. And then there’s “Upstate Rust,” the breakout anthem—equal parts U2 shimmer and Springsteen grit—about leaving home and choosing to build something new even when it’s scary. That track alone proves Reeya’s power to balance intimacy with universality; it’s both her story and ours.

What makes This Place so compelling is that it never settles into one lane. It can be delicate and bruised, or loud and triumphant, but always with a narrative spine. You can feel the influence of her heroes—Springsteen’s storytelling arcs, Fiona Apple’s emotional excavation, Alanis’s raw nerve, U2’s soaring atmospherics—but nothing here feels imitative. Instead, it feels like Reeya is weaving her own fabric from those threads.

And then there’s her voice. If the songs are maps, her vocals are the compass—clear, unwavering, always pointing you toward the emotional truth at the heart of the track. Whether she’s belting with arena-rock intensity or whispering in confessional mode, there’s a consistency of presence: you believe her, every word.

By the time the record ends, you realize This Place isn’t about one city, or even a collection of them. It’s about survival. About learning to carry old homes with you without letting them drag you down. About making peace with memory while still moving forward. It’s both rooted and in motion, much like the artist herself.

Reeya Banerjee has made the kind of album that asks you not just to listen, but to reflect on your own “places”—the ones you’ve lived, the ones you’ve left, the ones that live inside you whether you like it or not. It’s her most ambitious, cohesive work yet, and it cements her not just as a singer-songwriter, but as a chronicler of life’s thresholds.

This Place isn’t just an album—it’s an atlas of the heart.

We spoke to Reeya about her journey so far.

Do you have an interesting moment or story from your early life that has had a significant impact on your journey into music?

REEYA: My origin story as a musician starts with The Beatles. My mom was a huge Beatlemaniac and had all their records on LP. I was maybe six or seven years old when we were listening to “Paperback Writer” one day, and that opening bass riff came in—just stabbing, pulsing rhythmically after the vocals and guitars—and something in me lit up. I didn’t even know what a bass guitar was, but I knew I wanted to do that.

At the time, I was taking piano lessons—my mom wanted me to become a concert pianist and end up at Carnegie Hall. But I was like, nope. I want to be Paul McCartney. And even though Paul was her favorite Beatle, for some reason she was weirdly against the idea of me, a girl, playing bass. That was a point of tension, but it didn’t change anything for me. I knew right then: I didn’t want to be a classical pianist—I wanted to be a rocker.

Are there any artists that were influential to your musical journey? How have they inspired your sound as an artist?

REEYA: I always say that my holy trinity is The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, and U2. Each of them informs how I approach music. The Beatles taught me the craft of a great pop song—even when they got experimental in the studio, they always knew how to write a hook. Bruce is a master storyteller, and that’s how I write too. I think of my songs as little short stories, vignettes. And U2? Their sound is big, bold, emotionally charged—I’m not religious, but there’s something deeply spiritual about the passion in Bono’s voice and The Edge’s guitar work. That kind of emotional scale has absolutely influenced me.

In terms of sound, I’m also a child of the ‘90s. I grew up with Top 40 radio that was filled with power pop and post-grunge—bands like Matchbox Twenty, Fastball, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters, Alanis Morissette, Fiona Apple. That’s the sonic language I absorbed, and you can hear it in my own music.

How would you describe your sound to new listeners? What do you think sets you apart?

REEYA: I’d describe my sound as emotionally honest, lyric-forward rock with a post-grunge and power pop heart. Think Matchbox Twenty or Third Eye Blind—but filtered through my own lens. I’m not doing it to be retro or ironic. I’m of that era, and I write from that place because it’s what shaped me.

What sets me apart, I think, is that I’m not borrowing from that sound—I’m extending it. I’m making music that’s rooted in a particular lineage, but it’s current because it’s mine. It’s not pastiche; it’s lived-in.

What’s your creative process? Where do you normally start when it comes to writing and recording? Do the lyrics come first?

REEYA: Always lyrics first for me. Top-down. I usually start with a concept, a story, a feeling I want to express, and then I begin crafting the lyrics around that. I work closely with my collaborators—Luke Folger and James Rubino—and what’s great is that they ask the right questions to help me translate that emotional concept into sound.

They’ll say, “What’s the vibe? What do you want this to feel like sonically?” And from there, we start building the musical world together. Once I hear the instrumental or arrangement, I go back and sculpt the lyrics further, shaping the phrasing and rhythm so that the words live comfortably inside the sonic landscape. But the initial spark always comes from the words.

Have you had any challenges or adversities in your life that you feel have shaped you as an artist?

REEYA: Absolutely. The biggest one was losing my mother to cancer when I was twelve. She was first diagnosed when I was four and battled it off and on for eight years. She was incredibly strong, but eventually her body just couldn’t take it anymore.

That loss is one of the deepest imprints on my life and my art. There’s never a good time to lose a parent, but being twelve—especially as a girl losing the central female presence in the household—was particularly hard. It shaped my sense of identity, and it gave me a well of grief and longing that shows up in my writing, even when I’m not explicitly writing about her.

Songs like “Snow” and “Blue and Gray” from This Place touch on that time in my life, but it’s not just those. It’s in the texture of everything I write. My first record, The Way Up, was about recovering from a mental health crisis, and that crisis was closely tied to unresolved grief. So yes—my mother’s death is a part of my story, and you can hear it in my music.

Are there any moments or achievement from your career so far that you’re most proud of?

REEYA: Yes! I’m incredibly proud of the music video for “Upstate Rust,” which is the final track on This Place and also the last single we released leading up to the album. We shot it at Lorien Sound Recording Studios in Brooklyn—where we recorded the album and where my band rehearses—and it’s just a simple performance video of me and the full band.

I asked Luke to write something that sounded like arena rock. I said, “I want it to sound a little like a U2 song.” And he delivered. There’s even a disco-y bassline in there. It’s the kind of song you want to blast in the car with the windows down.

What’s absolutely is WILD is that video has now cracked 230,000 views on YouTube! I’m an independent artist. No label, no manager, no promoter, no team—just a lot of heart and a band I adore. My channel went from 300 subscribers to 15,000 in what feels like no time. There’s something magical about that video and that song – I don’t know what it is, but I’m so proud of that. I never thought anything I wrote would get that kind of attention.

Which do you prefer, the creative process or live performance? Or do you enjoy both equally?

REEYA: I started out as a live performer—playing in cover and bar bands doing Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin, Springsteen, U2—you name it. I’ve always loved being on stage. There’s something magical about the adrenaline, the camaraderie with bandmates, and the energy exchange with a crowd, even if it’s small. That part of performing is incredibly special to me.

That said, over the past five years, I’ve spent most of my time focused on studio work and songwriting for the first time. The creative process has also become something I deeply cherish, especially because I get to collaborate with amazing people like Luke and James, and my band. So much of that work is about connection too—just like playing live.

So I don’t think I can pick one over the other. What I love most is being in community with musicians I care about, making music together—whether we’re writing it or performing it. That’s the part that feeds my soul.

Do you as an artist require fans to fully understand your message in each song or do you encourage subjective interpretation from every listener?

REEYA: I absolutely encourage subjective interpretation. I went to film school, so I strongly believe that while an artist has a message or story they want to convey, a big part of art is the dialogue between the creator and the audience. I love when listeners tell me what a song meant to them—especially when it’s something I hadn’t thought of. That kind of resonance, that sense of universality, is so powerful.

Even I reinterpret my own songs over time. For example, Deep Water from my first album, The Way Up, was originally written as a song about toxic codependency. But after performing it for a while, I realized it was actually about a specific person, and that shifted how I experienced and delivered the song live. It went from being mournful to something closer to anger.

There’s a similar feeling with Upstate Rust on This Place. I know what I wrote it about, and that intention still holds, but some major changes have happened in my life since I wrote it. Now, I hear new meaning in those lyrics—something that fits where I am today. That’s the beauty of songwriting: it grows with you, and it grows with your audience too.

Does the political landscape have an impact on your music, or do you keep your personal opinions separate from your work as an artist?

REEYA: I’ll be honest: this is a tough one to answer openly right now, especially in the U.S. political climate. As a woman of color and a child of immigrants, my identity absolutely informs my art, even if I’m not writing overtly political songs.

Just existing and telling my story can be a political act. This Place is a deeply personal record, and a lot of that personal truth is shaped by my lived experience. That said, I don’t write songs with specific political messages. I’m not Bono—though I adore Bono. And Bruce Springsteen, too—I admire the boldness with which they speak their truths. I’ve been on a really big Peter Gabriel kick lately and he has some amazing political songs – Biko, We Do What We’re Told, etc. But I’m also aware that they’re older white men with a different kind of cultural permission.

For me, there’s still fear around saying too much, especially publicly. I hate that I feel that way, but unfortunately that’s just the way the culture has turned. As a minority, it all feels very fraught and frankly scary right now. If you know where I grew up (San Francisco), where I went to school (a very hippie arty high school), and where I live now (the New York city metropolitan area), you can probably guess where I stand politically. But for now, I’d rather let the music speak for itself and trust that the right people will hear what they need to hear in it.

What are your future plans? Any new songs/projects on the horizon?

REEYA: We’re hoping to take This Place on the road and play more live shows. I would absolutely love to tour—whether that’s a tri-state run or something up the East Coast. If any promoters are out there, hit me up!

In terms of new music, James Rubino and I have been talking about doing an EP. We started brainstorming ideas last summer, and we’ve got some early demos. The sound is leaning more into classic rock and swampy grooves—think Some Girls-era Stones or Creedence Clearwater Revival. It’s a little less ‘90s power pop and more down-home rock and roll.

The songs are inspired by my time in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where I last year with my partner. It was a tough transition—we left behind our New York roots and felt pretty isolated down there. But there was also a raw beauty to the landscape, and that year changed me. I became a strong distance runner, and I spent time on these incredible trails along the Tennessee River and the South Chickamauga Creek that I still think about.

This Place was fully written before we moved there in 2024, so Chattanooga doesn’t appear in its story arc. I was working on mixing the record with Luke while I was down there, though, and I would listen to his revisions while I was out there on my long runs – so in a funny way, This Place does feel very anchored within the nature and climate of Chattanooga So I think this EP will be the missing chapter—and now that we have come back home(ish) to New Jersey, maybe a few Jersey songs will sneak in too. I am in the land of Bruce Springsteen now, after all.

”This Place” is available now on all major streaming platforms