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To
say Devendra Banhart is unique is an absurd understatement. When I first
heard the voice of this completely unknown, precociously talented 21-year-old
songwriter, I could not believe it. His occasionally warbling falsetto is
alternately bizarre, comical, and often a little frightening. Coupled with
his advanced finger-picking guitar style - which itself often veers schizophrenically
from gentle grooves into jolting, non-rhythmic stabs and weird harmonic
flights of chaos - and the wildly surreal nature of his truly exceptional
lyrics, each of the 21 songs on this CD (some of which clock in at about
30 seconds) contain their own special drama and immediately memorable melodies
- no mean feat when your instrumentation is acoustic guitar and voice, with
only the occasional hand clap or whistle thrown in as "orchestration."
In a popular music environment inundated with computer and electronically
generated sound and sanitized ProTools mixes, it's a tremendous relief to
hear something so ridiculously compelling, low-tech, utterly personal, and
hand-made.
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The
songs were recorded on various borrowed and usually broken 4 -track cassette
recorders by Banhart himself in various haphazard locations around the
globe. These recordings were made solely for himself, and they're better
for it - devoid of any self - consciousness or artifice, just utterly
personal and idiosyncratic, magically twisted and imaginative.
All kinds of comparisons that might be relevant in describing Banhart
- from Marc Bolan's pre-T. Rex recordings to Daniel Johnston, to Nick
Drake's inner purity and pathos, to Karen Dalton (one of Banhart's idols).
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