Devendra Banhart – Flying Wig (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 48:03 minutes | 929 MB | Genre: Psychedelic Folk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mexican Summer
After a pair of triumphs in 2019’s breezy, wonderful Ma and 2021’s ambient pandemic record Refuge, Devendra Banhart indulged himself in desolation. With help from producer Cate Le Bon (Wilco, Deerhunter), Flying Wig embodies Banhart’s recent declaration of, “My whole life has been filled with sadness. Everything I do in life is to help cope with that sadness.” Oddly enough Banhart has always been best on happier musical avenues like dream pop, psychedelic folksiness and bossa nova lite . And despite his determination to be downbeat on a record he recorded while wearing “an Issey Miyake dress the color of the spring sky—a gift from Le Bon’s own wardrobe—and his grandmother’s pearls,” his melodic-ness comes out in “Fireflies.” Floating along on his soft vocals and a mesmeric synth bed, Banhart eventually concludes, “When I said I wouldn’t need it/ That’s when I knew that I would need it.” Slow, methodic arrangements dampen the mood overall; the material is not as strong on either stylistically different previous album. “Charger” is almost hymn-like in its sluggish tempo. The title track, which ends with the image of Banhart dancing naked without a head, is also built on his characteristically quiet vocals and Le Bon’s synths. Fortunately, there is some lyrical muscle beneath the gauzy musical accompaniment: “Certainty’s a number/ I’m starting to doubt/ Loving you/ Is all I’m certain about/ And if I have failed to live by promises made/ I give myself till nothing remains.” The hypnotic “Twin” is a much-needed change of pace, with a focused melody and lots more going on instrumentally, highlighted by a jagged, razor-sharp guitar solo. Despite the overall glum tone and Banhart’s inclination towards sadness, glimmers of meaning do break through in the song when he repeats, “And yet this precious thing/ At the heart of everything you’ve wanted.” Flying Wig finds the multi-talented Banhart haunted to distraction in a quest to seek comfort in gloom. – Robert Baird
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Devendra Banhart & Noah Georgeson – Refuge (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 59:19 minutes | 464 MB | Genre: Indie Folk, Ambient
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Dead Oceans
Last spring, Devendra Banhart and Noah Georgeson started to make a record that was like nothing they had made before – an ambient album that would be both a haven from a suddenly terrified world and a heartfelt musical dialogue between two artists who have been friends and collaborators for over two decades. Refuge is an album of profound meditative beauty which offers the listener a much-needed sense of peace and renewal. But while it was recorded in 2020 its roots go back much further – all the way to the start of their friendship and, beyond that, to the shared sounds and ethics of their childhoods.
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Devendra Banhart – Mala (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 40:46 minutes | 435 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nonesuch
Mala is Devendra Banhart’s enthralling debut on Nonesuch Records. The album took shape in Los Angeles, where the singer-songwriter collaborated with longtime friend, Noah Georgeson. The pair played most of the instruments themselves, using borrowed equipment and a recorder they found in a pawn shop. Mala has already received four-star reviews from Mojo, Q, The Times and The Independent. It’s a “career-best” raved Q Magazine.
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Devendra Banhart – Ma (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 46:10 minutes | 510 MB | Genre: Alternative
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nonesuch
The tenth studio album from Devendra Banhart is a poetic paradox; joy and pain, light and dark, both metaphysical but grounded. All these contradictions come together and result in an album somewhere between the light-heartedness of Kings Of Convenience and the doom and gloom of The Velvet Underground. As usual, the Venezuelan-American has mastered a wide range of styles (bossa-nova, soft rock, chamber folk, dream pop) and shows off his linguistic abilities (singing in english and spanish) in dream-like musings of motherhood, death, friendship and the meaning of life. He has swapped the minimalism of his previous album Ape in Pink Marble (2016) for a more sophisticated style, notably in the duet with the great Vashti Bunyan in Will I See You Tonight. The coming together of this folk matriarch with her spiritual son is what makes the title of the album so meaningful; Ma not only reveals the talented crooner’s most intimate musings but is an elegant and graceful celebration of filial love. – Alexis Renaudat
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Devendra Banhart – Ape in Pink Marble (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 44:22 minutes | 456 MB | Genre: Folk, Indie Folk, Singer-Songwriter
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nonesuch
Singer/songwriter and visual artist Devendra Banhart emerged in the early 2000s and was soon considered an icon of the freak folk movement. In the years that followed, he expanded and experimented with his sound, perhaps hitting peak meandering with 2007’s Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon. Still touching on multiple genres, 2013’s Mala offered a more cohesive set. With Ape in Pink Marble, Banhart continues to reel in diversions and delivers his most understated album in over a decade. The palette is playful but restrained, with acoustic guitar, synths, mallet percussion, and Mellotron among its tools. Consistently reflective in sound and tone, relative excursions include the synthetic disco strings of “Fig in Leather” and the impression of underwater electronics on “Saturday Night,” which features muffled, manipulated drum sounds, synths, and koto. The stringed instrument also shows up on other tracks and contributes to unusual textures that mix electronic and organic sounds that are just slightly out of the ordinary but retain a bedroom-recording feel. (The album was recorded mostly in the songwriter’s home.) Another example of such offbeat timbres is the prepared guitar on “Mara.” A poppier entry is the goofy “Fancy Man,” which was co-written with Noah Georgeson and Josiah Steinbrick, Banhart’s co-producers and frequent musicians on Ape in Pink Marble. The song’s plunky, percussive tones and sustained atmosphere still fall in line with the rest of the tracks. Meanwhile, album highlight “Theme for a Taiwanese Woman in Lime Green” is a whimsical bossa nova where guitar and light drums are accompanied by spacy synths and lyrics like “There’s no one in the world that I love/And that no one is you.” The album’s overall effect is one of strolling along a seaside path, maybe with a stray dog and a straw hat, in a less-frequented village somewhere far from home, and it’s one of Banhart’s most satisfying. ~ Marcy Donelson
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