PRESS
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Devendra Banhart | OH ME OH MY... | Review/Interview
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Mojo | Andrew MaleThe Frog PrinceMy, what big talent you have, says Andrew Male Devendra Banhart Review/Mojo December Issue 2002 Shades of Syd, early Bolan, Karen Dalton and Vashti Bunyan in this startling debut from a previously unknown Texas-born 21 year old… Like some stick-framed chimera born of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Devendra Banhart has seemingly come from nowhere, spinning dark enchanted riddles born in the dusky corners of a childhood nightmare. Discovered by ex-Swans vocalist Michael Gira’s Young God Records after an LA support slot for New York art rockers Flux Information Sciences, Banhart presented Gira with a swag bag of songs and half songs recorded on 4-track and phone answering machines. These are the songs you can hear on Oh Me Oh My…, complete with tape hiss, car horns, and bird calls in the distance. With the opening handclaps and finger-picking fragment Tick Eats The Olive you hear the Harry Smith folk roots of Banhart’s taste, but it’s the voice that pulls you in, flitting from lilting to hectoring, sweet to sinister. At his sweetest – the soft croon of Michigan State – he sounds like Tyrannosaurus Rex and Bolan singing Nilsson fragments. But in his darkest moments, the......
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Devendra Banhart, Oh Me Oh My...
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New York Observer | by Joe HooperMr. Banhart’s cult status seems pretty well assuredWhen it comes to divas, agit-prop or otherwise, sometimes geography just raises more questions than it answers. Take the case of Devendra Banhart, a 21-year-old folk singer (I guess you’d call him) who was raised in Texas and moved with his family to Caracas, Venezuela, where, as he writes in his one-page biography, "everything’s fucked, but I love my grandmother, whom [sic] fed whiskey to me from her pinky, paid me to touch my earlobes, and let me pull her elbow flab." He wound up in a squat in New York, he says, where he came to the attention of former Swan Michael Gira’s indie-rock label, Young God Records. Mr. Gira listened to his demo tape and rushed it into production, cosmetically unretouched, as Mr. Banhart’s late October debut album, Oh Me Oh My … Walter Benjamin famously opined, "That which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art." In Mr. Banhart’s case, his crude overdubbing on a barely functional four-track is indistinguishable from his "art naïf" persona. His songs are surrealistic one- or two-minute vignettes rendered by a single......
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Davendra Banhart | Oh Me Oh My | Review
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www.almostcool.orgBanhart wants to trip you out using only layers of jangling guitars and multi-tracked vocalsTo say that the voice of Devendra Banhart's voice is an acquired taste is probably something of an understatement. He ranges between wavering quiet and letting loose with a high register, howling-at-the-moon crazy type of yowl. In a recent review that I'd read of this particular disc, the person writing had even gone so far as mistaked Banhart for a she (apparently didn't do enough research and decided to trust their ears, which would definitely be decieving at moments). Given the surreal world that Banhart paints with lyrics, though, I doubt he'd even be concerned with such a slipup, and would probably actually find it rather humorous. With a full album title of Oh Me Oh My...The Way The Day Goes By The Sun Is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Lovesongs Of The Christmas Spirit, his songs follow the rambling example of the title and odd worldplay is a staple. It's netherworld folk music, recorded for a trip through wonderland or a couch in a living room with a big batch of pharmaceuticals. The formula for the album is pretty simple in terms of construction, and it......
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Devendra Banhart | OH ME OH MY... | Review
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othermusic.com | MKthe best debut record I've heard all year......sure to make my top ten. At the tender age of twenty-one, Banhart has released an amazing collection of songs that seem to have sprung from well beyond his short number of years. These twenty-two songs were apparently recorded on various friend's four-track recorders over the last couple of years. Astonishingly, he's managed to make a lo-fi record that doesn't seem lo-fi. There is plenty of hiss, but somehow you don't really notice it. It is almost as if it were part of the songs intrinsic quality. While his influences are apparent (Tyrannosaurus Rex in particular), and periodically you'll notice a quote here or there (for instance a Karen Dalton line or some percussion I recognize from an Incredible String Band record), you never get the feeling that the songs aren't totally of him. The lyrics are particularly brilliant, vaguely surrealistic and idiosyncratic with sinister moments, yet tender ones as well that seem personal and affecting. It's nice to see a young person perform what is ostensibly "folk" music and not use the Palace Brothers as a reference whatsoever. In a way what makes the record so great is that its......
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Devendra Banhart | OH ME OH MY... | Review
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San Francisco Bay Guardian | Lynn RapoportWhen I closed my eyes, I heard a crazy lady sing the blues.Devendra Banhart, 20 years old, extravagant of hair, skinny as a rail, looked like he knew something about the cracks in the sidewalk when I saw him play in the back room of Club Waziema last year. He sat hunched over his guitar and drifted through a set of short, skittery songs in a voice that hung around in falsetto a lot, with sudden drops in altitude I could feel in my stomach. When I closed my eyes, I heard a crazy lady sing the blues. A year later, Banhart's come out with an album whose full title, Oh Me Oh My ... the Way the Day Goes by the Sun Is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Lovesongs of the Christmas Spirit (Young God), is a skittery, crazy-lady conversation all its own. For the record, I think he could stand up to Justin as a boy idol if he had to. Banhart's vocals are no less affected than Justin's and twice as unnerving. The nation's teenagers might not go for him, but undersocialized young adults on anti-anxiety medication may be waiting for trading......