PRESS
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Rejoicing in the Hands
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Big Takeover | Jack RabidA unique artist making some great and singular music.Banhart’s previous CDs, the Oh Me Oh My LP and the Black Babies EP (U.K.) were recorded by the itinerant musician himself. They had a thin, scratchy sound and a tendency to early T. Rex trilling with an earnestness that almost felt Adam Sandler-esque. Now with his popularity growing, Banhart and his producer and label head Michael Gira of The Swans decided that rather than lo-fi, they should move on and make everything sound nice and fat. There are strings and horns and on some numbers a dark vibe reminiscent of The Swans’ later work. Other songs have a light troubadour, almost Donovan feel, but Banhart seems more serious. Altogether a unique artist making some great and singular music....
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Rejoicing in the Hands
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Evil Sponge | Mr PharmacistA little Robert Johnson, a bit early Dylan, and a smidgen of Tiny Tim are in the mixA bit of fate to mention before the review: A few months back, I was scrounging through the remaining CDs (lots of Celine Dion and not much else) of a closing record store, the only one with a decent used section in my deep South and very sleepy military town, when a guy noticed my Swans t-shirt. He said he’d just had Michael Gira produce a record by a weird folk singer at his studio. According to this guy, Gira drank like a fish while never seeming the slightest bit drunk and showed some real control freak tendencies, all the while exuding the sort of genius that withers the weak. My accoster mumbled something about the folk singer sounding sort of angelic and fragile. Well, if that wasn’t strange enough, I then received the very record he was talking about (I’m guessing) in the mail to review. Weird little world, I think.On paper, it’s enough to make a well-thought person cringe: hippie-bred, early-twenty-something, gypsy eccentric writes self consciously weird little ditties and sings them accompanied mostly on an acoustic......
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Rejoicing in the Hands | Rating: 8.4
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pitchfork | Dominique LeoneRejoicing in the Hands establishes Banhart as a major voice in new folk music.You and I listen to more music than anyone in the history of civilization. I don't mean more than your friend or that guy on that message board who seems to know about every buzz-worthy leaked CD before anyone else, but rather, more than any previous generation of active music fans. Think about all our MP3s and CDRs, the stuff we actually buy, and then add in the music we hear once and immediately declare isn't worth the 45 seconds we spent with it. It almost seems ridiculous, because ultimately, few of us would be willing to recommend more than but a few songs (let alone albums) to anyone outside our close-knit music circles. Digital media was supposed to satisfy the audiophiles with better sound and the businessmen with yet another kind of product to convince us we weren't getting everything we could out of music/life. However, its primary effect has been to level music's impact to a similar scale as any other commodity-- outside those few songs we cling to like family, most of it ends up being used as trade-bait, rep maintenance,......
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Rejoicing in the Hands | AMG Rating ****
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All Music Guide | Thom JurekSimply stated, it is a stunner, form start to finishWhen Michael Gira's Young God label issued Devendra Banhart's glorious home-recorded debut, Oh Me Oh My, on an unsuspecting world, its gorgeous yet sparse primitivism, complete outsider lyric sensibilities, and infectious melodies grabbed hold of listeners all over the world. It offered them a bona fide fissure between popular and underground American culture. Banhart's aesthetic is no pose; his iconoclastic songwriting could not be farther away from officially sanctioned "alternative" music. However, given the unanticipated coverage and success of the album (by modest indie standards, folks, not those dictated by the biz), a quandary was presented in how to follow it up Should his new songs — and there were many — be recorded in exactly the same way to preserve the notion of "authenticity?" Or should he not be penalized by having to adhere to the same economic realities, and be nurtured as the developing artist he is? Wisely, Gira and Banhart saw through the smokescreen what a word like "authentic" implies. Banhart's songs are the authentic outsider article even if he were to record them in Barry White's studio, so why punish for the......
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This music is like...music to our ears
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Yale Herald | Lucas HanftIf a Georgian weeping willow had a voice, it would be his.Second semester senior year blues—do they exist phenomenally? I find myself with very little interest in anything other than German movies and downloading insane hipster music. What does it mean when you find yourself in the middle of Cross Campus alone at 3 a.m. and your only comfort is the high, lonesome holler coming out of your headphones? These days that high lonely holler belongs to Devendra Banhart. The difficulties of Banhart's uneven, though often brilliant, debut have thankfully been resolved. He's moving up in the world, trading in his busted four-track for the living room of a Muscle Shoals studio vet for his second album, Rejoicing in the Hands (Tues., Apr. 20, Young God). The record confirms what his first hinted, that Banhart is one of the most distinct—and distinctively American—songwriters to emerge in ages. There's no mistaking a Devendra Banhart song; the plain-spoken lyricism and wit, the cryptic imagery set over melodies Nick Drake would've written had he grown up in the Delta are all essential. The only other singer-songwriter who can be this creepy and funny simultaneously is Bob Dylan. His voice......