PRESS
-
Devendra Banhart: Oh Me Oh My...
()
www.tangmonkey.com | by SeanThree words: twisty witchy songsOh Me Oh My does not begin with the voice: it begins with finger-picking on an acoustic guitar. "Tick Eats the Olives" is a sprightly little tune, forward moving, dancing along. The solo guitar is joined by handclaps and oohs, simple and circular. Forty seconds. This is what Banhart says about it: A woman is staring at you, and she’s crying, but they are not tears they are olives she cries, but though she cries, she is not worried, for every time she cries one of her olive tears a tick crawls out from the back of the lower part of her head and (very quickly) crawls up her cheek and (very quickly) eats the olive. These are not the lyrics: there are none. This is simply the thinking of the man that finger-picks, the imagining behind the hands that clap. It's strange, yes - but what makes Oh Me Oh My so special is that the strangeness is utterly compelling. When Banhart begins to sing in earnest on the second track, "Roots (If the Sky Were a Stone)" he sounds like something weird and warbling: cracked, mad or magic. On these twenty-one......
-
Devendra at Cafe Du Nord
()
www.musicspork.com | by LisaLive ReviewCafe Du Nord· January 21, 2003 Devendra Banhart sat in his socks on a table on stage began softly strumming his guitar. While his fingers spun dreamscapes, he sang with the purest form of soul. He was a little bit Jeff Buckley, with his scruffy pretty boy crooning, and a whole lot like a voice from a crackling 78 -- singing the sort of blues that came before the blues, deep South spiritual songs. He scatted and swooped and soared with the effortless intensity of an otherworldly creature put here to speak through music. The audience, who had piled in on the floor of Cafe du Nord and waited patiently for Banhart in the cramped, hot little room, was rapt. Banhart's minimal banter was shy but charming. After each song, he turned away from his fans and took a swig of Corona. His lyrics painted vivid pictures: "Rays of sun lick your skin with its tongue." He asked a banjo player to join him for "Soon is Good." Apparently, the two strummed well past it's ending, as Banhart playfully improvised, "This is a done song. It's been done for a long time now" and went on......
-
Devendra Banhart, Oh Me Oh My
()
SF Chronicle | by James Sullivanbrittle new solo-acoustic talentThe rambling title of the new album by lo-fi discovery Devendra Banhart is worth reprinting here. It's seasonal, in its own eccentric way. The short version is "Oh Me Oh My," but the whole thing is "Oh Me Oh My . . . the Way the Day Goes By the Sun Is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Lovesongs of the Christmas Spirit." That tells you something -- not much, but something -- about this brittle new solo-acoustic talent. Signed to Young God Records, the label of the Swans' M. Gira, Banhart revisits the home-taping anti-style of the early '90s with conspicuous allusions to such ill-fated predecessors as Nick Drake and Syd Barrett. It's the kind of warped, poorly recorded music that the disinclined will dismiss as "wrong." New fans, however, will hear it just right. ...
-
Devendra Banhart | Oh Me Oh My | Review
()
Boise, Idaho, The Arbiter | Jim ToweillDevandra Banhart's lost tapes foundDuring the '30s, Devandra Banhart grew up in the small, unincorporated town of Wentzville, Mo. A good-natured, but shy and withdrawn boy, he generally preferred the company of animals to people. But he became deeply fascinated by the folk and blues music he heard when his parents took him on their business trips to St. Louis. He received an acoustic guitar from his uncle at age 13 and attempted to imitate this music from memory, eventually developing eccentric but highly skilled picking and singing styles. He never had a chance to record or play for any audience except his family before he went off to join the Allied Forces in 1942. Having a kind, peace-loving and fragile personality, Devandra's mind couldn't incorporate the terror and violence of war and had a breakdown. He was sent to a facility in London (ironically, the same hospital where J. D. Salinger stayed) where he was allowed to record a number of songs on a primitive piece of audio equipment as therapy. This creative outburst fostered a remarkable improvement in his mental health and he was declared fit to return to duty. Devandra Banhart......
-
Angels of Light | Everything is Good Here | Review
()
THE NEW YORK PRESS | Volume 16, Issue 4 | Jim Knipfel It's always seemed that they aren't songs he's writing so much as incantations Since the Swans broke up after 1996¹s Soundtracks for the Blind, Michael Gira has remained one of the busiest men in music. His Brooklyn-based label, Young God Records, has released dozens of albums by an international collection of jazz, rock, noise, folk and experimental groups. He¹s repackaged several old Swans records, released a spoken-word album and recorded his own music with a variety of musicians and under a variety of monikers‹the Body Lovers, the Body Haters and Angels of Light. Each post-Swans bands had a different attitude. The Body Haters was pure, rabid noise. The Body Lovers was noisy too, but more refined. Of them all, Angels of Light remains the most direct descendant of the Swans, continuing along the same trajectory the Swans were following when they broke up. That is to say, the songs on this third Angels of Light album bear no resemblance whatsoever to early Swans recordings. There are tunes here, and real singing, and more traditional song structures (and all the songs come in at under seven minutes). There are......