PRESS
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Rejoicing in the Hands
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Dustedmagazine.com | by Michael CrumshoOne of my favorite albums of the yearPossessed with a nimble fingers and quivering vibrato, Devendra Banhart's approach to both British and American folk forms catapulted him to the forefront of a burgeoning folk set faster than you could say "revival." He wowed Young God head Michael Gira with a clutch of homemade tapes recorded over the course of his travels that later became his debut, Oh Me, Oh My.... Granted, while his skills and craft as a songwriter were generally excellent, the tunes were sometimes aimless, locking in on his high-pitched braying and tape hiss that sometimes threatened to strangle his songs. Rejoicing in the Hands, his second proper full-length (and the first of two slated for release this year), comes as a bit of a shock, then. Any waifish naiveté or lingering lo-fi has been ditched. In fact, it sounds almost as if Banhart has aged ten years in the past two. What the record represents is a distillation of the material he presented earlier. Recorded with Lynn Bridges over the course of a couple weeks in his living room in Georgia, the tracks here feel more intimate and yet still spacious, framed by......
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Rejoicing in the Hands
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Blender Magazine | by Alec Hanley BemisActor-handsome boho’s second album plays like the soundtrack to one fucked-up acid flashbackLike many naive bohemians, 23-year-old Devendra Banhart spent time as an art student and drifter before settling in New York City. What sets him apart is an androgynous voice reminiscent of obsessive depressives Elliott Smith, Billie Holiday and Cat Stevens. It warbles, trills and crackles in his throat, well-matched by a modest folk backdrop — mostly finger-picked guitar and warm hints of piano, bass and strings. If he has a weakness, it’s that these 16 short songs — full of cryptic, evocative lyrics about “empress beards†and laughing lemon trees — wander like nuthouse monologues. But even that suits a singer who explains in one dreamy lyric that “this is the sound that swims inside meâ€: Lost in an eerie, graceful torpor, he opens his mouth and lets words seep out and linger, like so much intoxicating smoke....
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bands to watch | Devendra Banhart
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Spin | Caryn GarzI have a musical familyDevendra Banhart's musical journey began 11 years ago with a grand deception. "We were at karaoke, singing 'Hotel California,' and my brother told me it was my family playing the instruments - 'that's your grandmother on drums.'" he says. "I was like, I have a musical family - I have to play! But it was the fucking Eagles." Named by an Indian mystic whom his parents admired, the 22-year-old Texas-born singer/songwriter grew up in Venezuela, where he remembers "not being able to go to school because there'd been a coup." A serene, deliberate thinker who is partial to wearing dresses and going barefoot onstage, Banhart attracts "New Age yoga moms, divorced health-food fanatics, and wheatgrass enthusiasts" to his shows. They're likely to appreciate the folky, lo-fi vibe of his second album, Rejoicing in the Hands, which features 15 tracks of Banhart warbling about dancing teeth and his beard over graceful finger-picked acoustic guitar. Down the line, Banhart would like to make "listenable records that would get people to dance. I'd like to be an A&R rep for Michael Jordan Records, make all my friends a million bucks, and turn people on," he says,......
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Spinning on Air
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WNYC.ORG (NPR NY) | by David GarlandAcoustic Guitar Radio Show, click link above to listen"Acoustic guitar, how lovely you are," allege the lyrics of a song by The Magnetic Fields, and this show offers ample proof to back up that statement. We'll hear acoustic guitars in the brand new CDs, "Rejoicing In the Hands," by Devendra Banhart, and "I," the latest from The Magnetic Fields themselves. Also, finger-picking soliloquies by Jack Rose and by John Fahey; and the acoustic guitar as accompaniment in the strangely murky "Campfire Songs" by Animal Collective, the intimate songs of Nick Drake, Michael Gira, and more....
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Rejoicing the Hands
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Sentireascoltare | by Edoardo Bridda and Stefano Solventi In ItalianSe Me Oh My poteva sembrare (era?) uno sparare a casaccio (all'impazzata) i proiettili vaganti (o vaghi, fate voi) del proprio instabile arsenale, con Rejoicing In The Hands il buon Devendra - coadiuvato dal mentore Michael Gira - prende la mira, oh, se la prende. Ed è già una grande notizia, un fatto tutt'altro che scontato. Vogliamo dire, abbiamo a che fare - finalmente - con sedici canzoni fatte e compiute, finite e rifinite (concedendo qualcosa all'approssimazione nella quasi garrula Todo Los Dolores ), per quanto talora rapidissime, folk-blues che spuntano dal buio come lampi di lama ( There Was Sun ) o sguardi insidiosi ( Dogs They Make Up The Dark ) per farvi subito ritorno. Sedici colpi battuti alla porta del Mistero Americano o meglio di ciò che ne rimane, per scoprire che - oh, sì - ne rimane. Cuore di tenebra fatto di vetro e carne in cui innocenza e morale, intimismo e fatalismo, purezza e perversione continuano ad agitarsi dimenticati, ma vivi, incompatibili con il codice dei media, ma non per questo assenti, semmai dispersi, dissimulati, diluiti, attivi agenti omeopatici, immutabili nel tessuto culturale, cifre nascoste del......