PRESS
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Devendra Banhart
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Illinois Entertainer | by Steve ForstnegerBottom Lounge, Chicago Sunday, June 13, 2004It's funny. During the elongated period between Elliott Smith's final official album, Figure 8 , and his death, an unholy number of singer-songwriters sprang up with press clippings declaring them as his heirs. In the eight months since, not only the throne but any allusion to it has disappeared. Now, nobody's claiming that Devendra Banhart is that guy. But like Smith's early efforts when he was rotating outside the realm of his full-time gig, Heatmiser, Banhart recognizes no boundaries in his personal pursuits. His Smith-ish characteristic is that he is alone in his idiom; if he were to stop today the ensuing cult would outweigh the popularity he had during his recording career. Banhart is essentially a New York via San Fran busker whose tapes found the right tastemaking ears. Michael Gira brought the songwriter to his Young God Records and released the enigmatic Oh Me Oh My -- an album title whose 30 additional words rival Fiona Apple's When The Pawn -- which documented Banhart's idiosyncratic style that instantly recalls Lou Barlow's Sentridoh sideshow. But opposed to Barlow's snippets, the songs on Oh Me crackle beneath the cheap......
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DEVENDRA BANHART, Rejoicing in the Hands
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Seattle Weekly | by NED RAGGETTAt once attractive and unsettlingUncountable numbers of bands have happily helped themselves to T. Rex’s blueprint of strutting glam pop, but young singer/songwriter Devendra Banhart has found partial roots in Marc Bolan’s earlier, more overtly folk-tinged work. Banhart’s voice possesses a haunting quaver that recalls Bolan’s unearthly keening, but he matches it with a wide appreciation of Bolan’s many—and often more musically accomplished—late ’60s peers, like the Incredible String Band. Banhart’s debut album, Oh Me Oh My . . . , showed his potential in a fragmented way (it mostly consisted of very short demos), but Rejoicing in the Hands has far more memorable songs, not to mention being better produced, with label boss Michael Gira adding a minimal rhythm section and string overdubs that enhance Banhart’s direct, intimate appeal. Throughout, Banhart plays some deft guitar (“Poughkeepsie,†“Tit Smoking in the Temple of Artesan Mimicryâ€) and warbles reflective, often playful lyrics (“Now because my teeth don’t bite/I can take them out dancing, alright!â€), culminating with the breathtaking voice-and-piano “Autumn’s Child,†which, like Rejoicing in whole, is at once attractive and unsettling....
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THE JOY OF DEVENDRA
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The Stranger | by Stevie ChickBanhart's Singing Is Better Than SexDevendra Banhart w/Joanna Newsom, Vetiver Sat June 5, Crocodile, 9 pm, $10. "I found my voice while I was cross-dressing and looking at myself in the mirror," smiles Devendra Banhart, as he signs another CD sleeve and gratefully receives another awkwardly, gratefully delivered hug/handshake hybrid from another entranced follower. Moments ago, he sat cross-legged onstage at this dingy, sweaty London bar, his voice pristine but with a shiver of midnight chill inching down its spine, eeking music-box chimes from his guitar. Something truly special, something intimate--but something that has to be shared. "I was wearing this white dress, and combing my hair back into a ponytail," he continues. "I didn't have my beard and I looked a lot like a woman. I was putting on lipstick, singing--not trying to specifically sing like anything, just singing until I could walk out and be cross-dressing in front of my family. And even though I'm only 14, I'm confident enough, because I've found my voice. It was very symbolic; finally, something felt warm--everything was cold, all these things I was trying, but then suddenly I felt warm--so I walked outside, aged 14 years......
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DEVENDRA BANHART: Rejoicing In The Hands
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CMJ | by Mikael WoodBanhart’s terrific follow-upArt-school refugee Devendra Banhart’s 2002 debut, the 22-word title of which begins Oh Me Oh My... and challenges Fiona Apple for flaccid surrealist whimsy, was the outsider-art album every insider loved that year: a loose collection of poorly recorded songs and song fragments sung by a high-voiced balladeer and strung together into semi-coherence by former Swans mastermind Michael Gira. Rejoicing In The Hands, Banhart’s terrific follow-up, is plenty weird compared to straight-laced indie folksters like Damien Jurado and the late Elliott Smith, but its delicately picked acoustic guitars and warm, casual, actually-cut-in-a- studio production make for a far less challenging listen than Oh Me. At points, Banhart’s quavering vocals—imagine Billie Holiday if she did her undergrad at Brown—even manage to evoke a sense of disturbed calm familiar to Cat Power fans. And the occasional splash of instrumental color from members of Gira’s Young God stable lends his warbling valuable emo-tional depth. Of course, parsing Banhart’s lyrics remains akin to chasing a rainbow-colored unicorn down a red-curtained rab-bit hole—“Each strand of her hair is really insect eyes,†he sings over zither-like plinks, “and each hole in her tongue is always occupied by the milk of......
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DEVENDRA BANHART | Rejoicing in the Hands
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Skyscraper Magazine, Spring In every way as enchantingly strangeA couple years ago, to a receptive critical audience, Devendra Banhart released his debut record, Oh Me Oh My, a compelling combination of lo-fi indie acoustic singer-guitarist fare and stimulating creativity in songwriting and delivery. That record earned Banhart comparisons to outsider artists ranging from Nick Drake to Syd Barrett to Karen Dalton. And, while not centering the target, all comfortably lodge in the periphery. Rejoicing in the Hands removes only the lo-fi. This crisp, simple recording cleanly bares Banhart's gift of voice and instrumental dexterity. The songs here, too, improve on the already wonderful ones on that first record. They are generally more realized, and are in every way as enchantingly strange. Banhart has a rare ability to put one in mind of the entire story of Twentieth Century popular music (blues, folk, pop and rock), and his singular vocal means no mistaking this for anyone else's sixteen tracks of sound with the deviation of the new yet vaguely timeless. In his early twenties, Banhart seamlessly unifies the wide-eyed wonder of childhood with complex adult concerns. The range of emotion and imagery is broad: an involving psychedelic love song ("Insect Eyes"),......