PRESS
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DEVENDRA BANHART - HIT ME WITH THE SURREAL FEEL
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IndieinitiativeHis voice, a quivering high-tension wire, sounded like it could have been recorded 70 years agoSometime 2002, Michael Gira, the former frontman for eighties noise extremists, The Swans, stumbles across the crude homemade recordings of a then, 21 year old, homeless, neo psych/folk hippie artist and musician from San Francisco named Devendra Banhart. Stunned by what he had heard, Gira decides to release the recordings himself on his own, Young God Records label, simply because he had never heard anything quite like Devendra before. Ever. Oh Me, On My... The Way the Day Goes by the Sun is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Lovesongs of the Christmas Spirit, was/is the album. 22 songs of surreal, abstract beauty and fractured story telling over simple acoustic guitar. His voice, a quivering high-tension wire, sounded like it could have been recorded 70 years ago - these songs could have been sitting in someone's attic, left there since the 1930's. Drawing inspiration from some of the great folk and country-blues artists of yester-yore, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Mississippi John Hurt, Tim Buckley, Fred Neil, John Fahey et all, Devendra Banhart recorded on a four-track and through an answering machine. The album endured huge critical acclaim and......
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Devendra Banhart - Nino Rojo
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Prefix Magazine | by by John MacDonaldIt is final proof of a true original in the singer-songwriter communityPop music can be seen, in terms of its content and appeal, as essentially an adolescent medium, but folk music, though surely informed by pop hi-jinks, often speaks with a more mature voice. It's our fathers and our uncles whom we imagine lounging by the fire as they pick out a Jon Fahey or Leadbelly tune on the old Martin. A broad generalization, sure, but there is a resignation and lucidity (all angst-ridden Connor Obersts aside) to those lonely strummers that gives them a weight that a Jet or even a Modest Mouse can't touch. With his third full-length in three years, Devendra Banhart has come wide-eyed to tug on folk music's collective pant leg and demand the attention he undeniably deserves. Never has a singer-songwriter sounded so endearingly infantile, so awed by the immensity of experience as has Banhart -- an artist whose music makes lines like "My smells grew some new smells and I just couldn't smell them all" sound commonplace. His 2002 debut, Oh Me Oh My..., a tape-hissing song cycle filled with agile finger-picking and an unmistakable vibrato, had......
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Devendra Banhart, Niño Rojo
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Cokemachineglow | by Scott Reid...most artists wait five-six years before attempting their own White AlbumDevendra Banhart self-describes Niño Rojo, his newest record for Young God records and his second full length release of all new material this year, as the son of Rejoicing in the Hands, the "RED SUN" that is "not observing but participating" and "Exuberant and foolish [as] he begins his journey ONWARD!" Granted, this is first-grade hippie-talk that begins to waver toward Tori Amos-level artistic narcissism, but Banhart isn't just one to off-handedly spurt out slogans like your average bong-jockey. Having already released a terrific follow-up to 2001's Oh Me Oh My with Hands (read the CMG review here), proving himself one of the foremost talents of the ever-growing neo-psych-folk movement, and more than capable of backing up his, for lack of a better word, odd concepts with equally atypical music. Niño is, in reality, just a companion disc to Rejoicing in the Hands and is, for all intents and purposes, the second half of a joint release (tellingly, the two will be released together as a double record in the not-too-distant future). There isn't any drastically different approach to either record, though since both were recorded......
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Devendra Banhart, Niño Rojo
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Cokemachineglow | by Scott Reid...most artists wait five-six years before attempting their own White AlbumDevendra Banhart self-describes Niño Rojo, his newest record for Young God records and his second full length release of all new material this year, as the son of Rejoicing in the Hands, the "RED SUN" that is "not observing but participating" and "Exuberant and foolish [as] he begins his journey ONWARD!" Granted, this is first-grade hippie-talk that begins to waver toward Tori Amos-level artistic narcissism, but Banhart isn't just one to off-handedly spurt out slogans like your average bong-jockey. Having already released a terrific follow-up to 2001's Oh Me Oh My with Hands (read the CMG review here), proving himself one of the foremost talents of the ever-growing neo-psych-folk movement, and more than capable of backing up his, for lack of a better word, odd concepts with equally atypical music. Niño is, in reality, just a companion disc to Rejoicing in the Hands and is, for all intents and purposes, the second half of a joint release (tellingly, the two will be released together as a double record in the not-too-distant future). There isn't any drastically different approach to either record, though since both were recorded......
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Devendra Banhart | Niño Rojo
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Pitchfork Media | by Dominique LeoneBanhart's record makes the most sense at the mercy of simple pleasures and the young at heart It's funny that Young God founder Michael Gira should make a point in the press release for Niño Rojo that his role in Devendra Banhart's career was merely to release his music, that everything else took care of itself. I imagine Gira felt strongly about Banhart from the get-go, and his pleasant surprise that the rest of the world (inasmuch as Banhart's newfound popularity translates to the "rest" of anything) has since come to agree is equally understandable. Yet, I wonder if, like me, Gira gets the feeling that Banhart has arrived at a place where he's independent of Young God, himself, or his press. Journalists are often accused of hubris, wherein they're supposed to believe the things they write about are necessarily benefited due to increased publicity. In fact, musicians can benefit from this, but if I'm to believe Gira (and I do), Banhart's success is due more to people responding "honestly to his music." The last time I wrote about Banhart, regarding his Rejoicing in the Hands album from earlier this year, I emphasized how removed......