PRESS
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D. Banhart, Nino Rojo
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Q MagazineQuoteNot everyone will want to follow Banhart's cosmic meanderings, but those who take the plunge will find much to feed their head. [Oct 2004, p.133]...
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Devendra Banhart, Nino Rojo
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MojoQuoteNino Rojo is no mere best-of-the-rest affair, but a sibling piece of equal intimacy and inspiration. [Oct 2004, p.102]...
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Devendra Banhart | Nino Rojo
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Philadelphia Inquirer | by Steve KlingeSurreal lyrics about animals and insectsDevendra Banhart, the young Texan with the penchant for surreal lyrics about animals and insects, heads the so-called freak-folk movement that includes harpist Joanna Newsom and Philly's Espers. Although his music shares the homemade, untutored unconventionality of folk art, he's schooled enough to cover octogenarian Ella Jenkins' "Wake Up, Little Sparrow" to open his third album, Nino Rojo. He also coaxed obscure British folkie Vashti Banyan to sing on Rejoicing in the Hands, the Nino companion album from earlier this year. Banhart, who likes to warble atop haunting, finger-picked acoustic guitar figures, can be captivating, especially when he fleshes out "We All Know" and "Be Kind" with swinging horns and joyful sing-along choruses. But he can also be frustratingly and willfully obscure, singing lists of non sequiturs or impenetrable streams of consciousness in brief ditties....
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Devendra Banhart, Niño Rojo
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Tiny Mixtapes | by David Bohm...we should be so lucky as to be so wondrously perplexed with all we hearI've been playing an unhealthy amount of online Texas Hold'em lately, and I've more often than not been wanting to have the new Devendra Banhart record as the soundtrack to my descent into play money poverty. Now, while I'm not sure these two facts are connected in any intrinsic way or holds any commentary on the nature of each, it is always a strong endorsement of anything if it can shirk your attention almost completely away from the annoyance of losing $20,000 play dollars to a guy named "PokeHerPro" holding a full house, jacks over sevens, and flutter you to a gable of lysergic metaphor and endearing bestiality. It certainly is the case that Niño Rojo, Banhart's second release this year, finds itself decidedly further through the looking glass than its predecessor, the year's folk landmark, Rejoicing In The Hands. And while songs from both records were recorded in the same session, in hindsight, the latter found Banhart more contained to cohesive structure in his storycraft to feed a sense of honest melancholy and well... rejoicing, whereas his latest effort quite......
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Devendra Banhart | Nino Rojo
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Rockfeedback...is a continuation of the lustrous, romantic minimalism that coated his peculiar, yet beautiful, firstExquisite, distinctive beard fetishist Devendra Banhart returns with a second album in under four months. Recorded during the same sessions of his fast-gaining-notoriety UK debut, ‘Rejoicing In The Hands Of…’, ‘Nino Rojo’ is a continuation of the lustrous, romantic minimalism that coated his peculiar, yet beautiful, first. How can it fail. Banhart is rockfeedback’s self-styled ‘Man of 2004’ – whether lollingly covering Ella Jenkins’ ‘Wake Up, Little Sparrow’, singing about monkeys on the sublime ‘Little Yellow Spider’ or verbally squawking along to such brass patterns as featured in the closing embers of ‘We All Know’, it’s fascinating how diverse a collage of sentiments and emotions the simplicity of a tattered, personally-illustrated lyric-book, beguiling and quivering vocal and acoustic guitar can convey. Banhart is an open sort of fellow, too. He doesn’t mind us peering in. ‘I want to sleep with, with, with… you,’ he bluntly exhales on ‘A Ribbon’; ‘I ain’t never coming back,’ he drops during ‘At The Hop’; ‘My cheques are also useless,’ he even suggests amidst a sumptuous Buckley-aping-Waits ‘My Ships’. But that’s his most precious commodity – to attract, create fiction, unravel......