PRESS
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DEVENDRA BANHART, Rejoicing in the Hands
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www.slugmag.com | by Jon BeanRaw emotionOne vital thing to consider about Devendra Banhart is the life he lived and who he was discovered by. This offers insight into what his voice and music a cut above the typical drool that poisons today's airwaves. If you pride yourself on knowing anything about music, you will appreciate the importance and beauty of the Swans and its brainchild, Michael Gira, who produces fresh new talent with his label Young God Records. Gira, in a quest for new talent, stumbled upon a disheveled, homeless Banhart, who evoked the same raw emotion that hadn't been heard since the days of Nick Drake, Leonard Cohen, Robert Johnson, or Marc Bolan and T Rex. The music is as simple as it gets, only a few acoustic guitar tracks at most, to complement Banhart’s honest, but not too overly sentimental voice. The only true criticism I could offer is that Banhart sounds a bit too much like Robert Johnson—as if he were doing it on purpose—and he is not exploring anything too innovative musically, but the ethos of the album is still strong. Banhart's story is of the artist's struggle to overcome poverty. His life is proof that......
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Devendra Banhart, Oh Me Oh My
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Vice Mgazine | by DAPHNE CARRBlissed Out Devendra and Entrance take the edge offDevendra Banhart looks like a dreamy-eyed sheep, his long sideburns curled around a chin drawn square as he howls tiny-speaker vocals over a death-rattle guitar. Hardly a shaman, not nearly a Lomax-purist, Banhart is more a psychedelic troubadour who projects the vague longing of early Marc Bolan and the non-sequitur genius of Syd Barrett. All this, plus a falsetto that could school Tiny Tim and a captivating live show, makes Banhart a shoo-in for indie folk’s next big thing. “It’s been amazing to watch the transformation, just in these few months,†says tourmate Guy Blakeslee, another psyched up singer-songwriter who records as Entrance and has watched Banhart’s audiences grow from an enthusiastic few to a dense, shhh-enforcing crowd, all in the course of a winter tour. Both art-school fool and son of a South American convict, Banhart is beyond affect and has plenty to sing about, even at his baby age of 21. His preoccupations with childbirth, physical deformity, and wordplay probably have something to do with his near-military-brat upbringing, which suggests a close matriarchal relationship and fast need of friends. That’s my take, anyway. Banhart found......
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I Am Singing To You From My Room
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All-Music Guide | by Thom JurekThe stark, humble nature of this recordingGiven the stark, humble nature of this recording, as well as its limited availability (only from the Young God website), it would be easy or dismiss this set by Michael Gira as a vanity project. But that would be an error. I Am Singing To You From My Room, the vast majority of which was literally recorded there (there is also a live fragment from "All Souls Rising" by the Angels of Light) is simply Michael Gira songwriter and singer playing directly into a DAT recorder in his office. These 11 songs offer the listener an even more poignant and intimate portrait of Mr. Gira than his Angels Of Light project does. Here, one can hear what a fine melodist Gira is, something that is sometimes forgotten once a band is involved in turning his strange, deeply iconographic songs into the sonic tapestries where drone, mode, and lyric are all fused into something entirely Other. In the quietude of his office, Mr. Gira's grainy tomes, take on the weight and depth of folk poetry in the same --albeit modern--way Dock Boggs and Roscoe Holcomb's original songs do. There is......
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Devendra Banhart, Rejoicing in the Hands
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We Love Musique | by ChristinaComme l'indique le nom de sa maison de disque, il est effectivement un jeune dieuAttention: Devendra Banhart est un singulier personnage. Jeune virtuose américain de 22 ans, on le proclame déjà roi du nouveau folk. Non seulement donne-t-il raison à sa réputation, il se distingue également de ses nombreux acolytes en réussissant à capter l'attention de ses auditeurs, par le partage de son univers magnifiquement étrange dont lui seul semble connaître le sens. Rejoicing In The Hands est un regroupement de compositions intimes et crues, performées en grande partie à la guitare sèche et rendant hommage d'une façon impeccable au folk, au blues et au country. La voix de fausset de Banhart provoque des frissons tout au long du disque tellement elle délivre une poésie sincère et sans prétention. Un peu comme les paroles de Jeff Mangum de Neutral Milk Hotel, celles de Banhart évoquent un language fortement imagé qui fait souvent sourire. Prenez par exemple la meilleure pièce du disque, "This Beard Is For Siobhan" où l'auteur-compositeur nous fait part de ses dents dansantes ("Because my teeth don't bite/I can take them out dancing/I could take my little teeth out/And I could show them......
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Angels of Light, Everything Is Good Here/Please Come Home
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The Sound Projector | by Richard Rees-JonesGira shapes his songs through compelling shifts of vocal registerMichael Gira's Angels of Light return with another collection of blasted folk-blues laments, at once as ancient as the Bible and as modern as tomorrow. After the first, hesitant steps of the debut Angels album, New Mother (1999) and the rapturous intensity of its follow-up How I Loved You (2001), this third album sounds both like and unlike its predecessors. There is the same careful, layered approach to the dynamics of songform, the same painterly use of a variety of acoustic instruments, and the same rich baritone voice singing lyrics shot through with convulsive, passionate imagery. What is new is a certain concision and a less self-consciously epic tone. The ambiguous, hesitantly reassuring message of the title points to absence and longing - an impression reinforced by the cover art, which foregoes Gira's usual use of resonant symbols and icons in favour of stark photographs of bare domestic interiors.The songs reflect this impression of acute emptiness. 'Palisades' maps the traces left by a death, or a disappearance; its melancholy vocals and dreamlike percussion are fatally undercut by the closing lines: "Reasons won't come, and no-one......