PRESS
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Devendra Banhart, Nino Rojo
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Soundsxp | by by Matt HA highly mannered hippy vocal his trademarkA strange old prospect, Mr Banhart. Like so many now, stripped bare folk is his mode of expression. A highly mannered hippy vocal his trademark. The style of his songs drifts from the deeply silly cod-kindergarten rhyme (Little Yellow Spider) to those with a more successful old fashioned blusey edge (An Island, Be Kind, Owl Eyes). If it weren't for the vocal a number of these latter could almost have been culled from some obscure 1920s American Folkways release (though it's worth noting that the best by some way, opener Wake Up Little Sparrow, is in fact a cover version). Ultimately though the voice wears you down over the length of an album. Where others with an idiosyncratic style (Will Oldham, Jim O'Rourke) gradually endear, Banhart moves from fun to kooky. So much that, before you get to the end, you wouldn't be surprised to hear him burst into a chorus of "Smelly Cat". Which is a shame, because when you do get to the last song - the uplifting drunken singalong of Electric Heart with its tipsy trumpet - you find that there is something to Mr Banhart......
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Devendra Banhart, Nino Rojo
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Erasing Clouds | by Dave Heaton...songs that are overwhelming in how simply they encapsulate feelings of love and hope...Earlier this year, Devendra Banhart's Rejoicing in the Hands found him stripping his surrealist-folk vision down to its essence and getting in touch with musical ghosts of the past, in a spare, out-in-the-country setting. Its companion album Nino Rojo comes from the same recording sessions, and has the same basic vibe about it. The feeling I get from Nino Rojo is that of pushing further into this style and sound, like 'now you know what I can do, so let's really get into it.' Beginning with the Ella Jenkins cover "Wake Up, Little Sparrow," Banhart takes us right back to the front porch and into the farthest-out regions of his mind. Nino Rojo is as successful as his other albums at using both traditional musical forms and imaginative deviations from them to project a wide-eyed fascination with the world around us and worlds beyond. Banhart's shiver-inducing voice wraps itself around nursery rhymes that are both emotionally unreserved and increasingly bizarre. Nino Rojo particularly excels at capturing the childlike nature of his music, and combining it with a psychedelic, dreamer's view of the......
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D. Banhart, Nino Rojo
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All Music Guide | by Thom Jurek...the shared delight of new encounters with music and languageAs was promised upon the release of Rejoicing in the Hands in the spring of 2004, Niño Rojo is a companion piece. It was assembled from the same recording sessions at Lynn Bridges' Atlanta home that produced 57 tracks. Thirty-two were chosen for the two albums. Some were overdubbed minimally in New York by Young God label boss Michael Gira and Devendra Banhart adding a nip of keyboard or harmonica here, and tucked in horn, backing vocal, or electric guitar there. What these songs showcase is that Banhart is a songwriter of guileless vision. His unaffected aesthetic is etched in the ether of mysterious traditional and psychedelic folk musics from the British Isle and in an America that disappeared the first time in the '30s with the Dust Bowl and for the second time in the grimness of mid-'70s determinism in the shadows of post-Vietnam shame and malaise. Banhart's songs don't hearken back so much as remind us of what we no longer possess as a culture. His songs are spiritual, terminally unhip, with labyrinthine grown-up melodies and the keen unsullied wisdom of children. These......
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Devendra Banhart, Nino Rojo (XL)
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The Stereo Effect (UK)| by Karen PiperNino Rojo sounds so far beyond record labels and pop chartsStrange, isn’t it? How something so leftfield (and he truly is), and quintessentially unique can capture imaginations on a grand scale? Already onto his second UK release, Devendra Banhart has delivered Nino Rojo, mere months after his debut Rejoicing in the Hands, and to little surprise, it’s another whopping sixteen tracks of blissful disengagement from the here and now. Never once during his romp, and it is a romp - “Little Yellow Spider†is a belter of a campfire tune – does Devendra glimpse the vultures that are circling and waiting for the kill. His voice is a rusty nail, love it or hate it, and the songs as simple as picnics and the years before the war (we guess). Despite being able to play for worshipping crowds, he still sounds like pure isolation. “I’d like to dance with you if you’d like me to†he quivers, half-sad and half-passionate quiver. Maybe it’s the beard, and the voice, or maybe it’s the sound of a rickety rocking chair on an old porch, the moonshine, the goldrush and the dusty sunsets – all those things......
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Devendra Banhart, Nino Rojo (XL)
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The Stereo Effect (UK)| by Karen PiperNino Rojo sounds so far beyond record labels and pop chartsStrange, isn’t it? How something so leftfield (and he truly is), and quintessentially unique can capture imaginations on a grand scale? Already onto his second UK release, Devendra Banhart has delivered Nino Rojo, mere months after his debut Rejoicing in the Hands, and to little surprise, it’s another whopping sixteen tracks of blissful disengagement from the here and now. Never once during his romp, and it is a romp - “Little Yellow Spider†is a belter of a campfire tune – does Devendra glimpse the vultures that are circling and waiting for the kill. His voice is a rusty nail, love it or hate it, and the songs as simple as picnics and the years before the war (we guess). Despite being able to play for worshipping crowds, he still sounds like pure isolation. “I’d like to dance with you if you’d like me to†he quivers, half-sad and half-passionate quiver. Maybe it’s the beard, and the voice, or maybe it’s the sound of a rickety rocking chair on an old porch, the moonshine, the goldrush and the dusty sunsets – all those things......