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Man of La Mantra
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SF Weekly | by Garrett Kamps The psychedelic folk of wandering minstrel Devendra Banhart It's a bright, blustery December day in Santa Monica, and Devendra Banhart is sitting on the steps of the California Heritage Museum, a rustic building that houses historical artifacts from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Surrounded by million-dollar beachfront condos, hip coffee joints, and a Gap outlet, the museum doesn't exactly fit into its landscape. For that matter, neither does Banhart. The singer/songwriter sports a white button-down shirt, a patterned vest, and a tattered black sport coat; his dark, shoulder-length hair conspires with wispy facial scruff to hide a young, wonder-struck face. Thin and scraggly, he wears his clothes like a scarecrow. Banhart's lengthily titled debut record, Oh Me Oh My...The Way the Day Goes By the Sun Is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Lovesongs of the Christmas Spirit, is equally out of step. Using little more than an old steel-string guitar and his arresting, alienlike voice, Banhart creates a surreal kind of folk music, full of odd symbols and cracked mantras. Recorded sporadically on lo-fi equipment, the songs feel like fragmentary sketches -- they often consist of only a few chords or notes, plucked......
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THE POP LIFE | Tributaries to the Musical Mainstream
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The New York Times | by John ParelesThe pop and jazz critics for The New York Times pick their favorite alternative albums of 2002“2. Devendra Banhart: "Oh Me Oh My . . . " (Young God) The quaver in Mr. Banhart's voice is as shaky as his songs' connection to everyday reality. In lo-fi recordings — usually just his guitar and his multiplied voice — his songs and fragments ponder animals, apparitions, logical leaps and childlike certainties, all with credible eccentricity.â€...
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Time Signature: Devendra Banhart's Debut Album, Oh Me Oh My . . . , Bears Signature Elements That Are Still in the Works--Wicked Mood Shifts, Ridiculously Simple Guitar Lines, and Nervous Desire.
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Baltimore City Paper | by Bret McCabeA Room of His OwnCreepy, Brooding, and Cool, Underground Sensation Devendra Banhart Lives in His Brain and Likes it That WayJumpy, jocose, and garrulous, Devendra Banhart answers the phone at his family's home in Encinal Canyon, Calif., outside Los Angeles, and instantly injures himself. "I just poked myself with my fucking thumb in my eye," he says, his craggy, nasal voice sounding even more pinched in his wince. "Actually I'm bleeding a little in my left eye. I'm shocked actually. I'm just like, 'What the fuck?' Did I just--it's because my nail is long and I have bad motor skills. I kind of just woke up and my hair is kind of a mess and I was like, 'I'm going to get the hair out of my face,' and then poke." It's the sort of off-kilter, elliptical anecdote that you'd expect from a young musician who is currently being branded an overnight underground sensation/savant kook. The 21-year-old Banhart appeared mysteriously last October when his debut, a collection of four-track and answering-machine recordings called Oh Me Oh My . . . the Way the Day Goes By the Sun is Setting Dogs are Dreaming Lovesongs......
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Devendra Banhart, Oh Me Oh My....
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Philadelphia Inquirer | by A.D. Amorosi Odd tales get a lush handlingSometimes music's finest moments seem to come out of nowhere. Consider 21-year-old Texan Devendra Banhart's debut disc, whose sounds are dragged from a black hole of spooky Bolan-esque vocals, finger-picked Fahey-like guitars, and dadaist lyrics. Banhart's Oh Me Oh My ... The Way the Day Goes by the Sun is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Lovesongs of the Christmas Spirit (Young God) has 22 tunes about places he's never been ("Michigan State") and about romancing people he can't remember ("The Thumbs Touch Too Much").But don't think his art is naive or purposefully primitive, or surrealist."The writing is . . . thought out to the millionth little hair on a one million billion trillion quadro-gazillion. . . haired insect," he says. "If surrealism is an attempt to write or express the subconscious, my writing is anything but that. In the end, I know a baby's about to be born." At first, Oh Me seems the grimmest ending to a holiday season since Tim Burton rolled through the pumpkin patch. This may be due to Banhart's choice of topics - odd tales of the true, not-so-true, and strangely quizzical. Ultimately, though, Oh......
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Devendra Banhart, Oh Me Oh My....
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The New York Times | by John ParelesblurbDevendra Banhart's cracked tunes, free-associating lyrics and eerie, quivering voice recall 1960's oddballs like Syd Barrett and the pre-glam-rock Marc Bolan, but he has a strange streak that's all his own…...