mp3s: Devendra Banhart

Mike, in his arithmetic wisdom, made good sport of deconstructing The Arcade Fire. That was a week ago, and in the intervening days, I've had access to a broadband connection. With that and a little moxie I've coaxed into existence tAF's utter antithesis, Devendra Banhart.
These are from his penultimate release, Rejoicing in the Hands, I'd heard about him a long time ago--probably when the album actually dropped--but Pitchforkmedia, where I'd seen the review, has this wierd thing of not always liking good bands. Sometimes they like something I utterly abhor. With a name like Devendra Banhart and mug that looks equal parts Charles Manson and Ernest Hemingway, I figured he might be one of those.

He wasn't. What exactly he is, I haven't really figured out yet, probably closer to Ricky Skaggs and Billie Holiday, but even that is simplistic. Who are those people? A bluegrass juggernaut and a jazz singer who died almost 50 years ago. So old, but more than merely retro, his albums have a studied archival feel. From the simple arrangements [rarely employing even percussion] to the vocals sung as though through a Campbell's Soup Can, his sound actually feels like it was made in the period. Kitschy? Yeah. Dated? Maybe, but not at all fake sounding.

There's a sincerity and scholarship to his gender-neutral vibrat that evokes and brings current musical forms that lost favor before my dad was born. It's wierd, but compelling. His lyrics have a lush and meandering quality, taking time to develop and elaborate on patterns and images that build on and juxtapose themselves to create swells and troughs of feeling. The formal repetition aids this greatly.

I know I was born, I was born/when I slipped out of my mother's womb/I know it was warm, it was warm/because I slipped out on a hot afternoon
And I know there was sun there was sun/because I felt it on my human skin/And I know it was done, it was done, when I saw the moon risin'

Because of the repetition, the accompanying guitar often sounds like early Leonard Cohen, another significant thing, but like Cohen, the simplicity and repetition never outstays its welcome. Banhart successfully navigates complex sentiments in around 2 powerful minutes. I can't get enough.

Insect Eyes, I think, is actually in sonnet form, but I can't be sure. If it is, indeed, then it's a wonderful and perverse update of Shakespeare's satiric 130th. Actually, there's no way it could be a sonnet, what a stupid idea. It still feels Elizabethan.

Your black two lips have time/and your hands rejoice in mine
That seed, it grows all day/that seed, it grows all night/and our veins are intertwined

So there it was. One dude, one guitar, a warbling falsetto and 50 odd songs later I was in tears, teeth-knashing, lamenting audibly that this 20-year-old hadn't managed to release more albums, worlds for me to swim around in. Even putting out two a year, as he did in 2004, won't nearly sate my desire for his pretensionless anachronisms. The utter goddamned shame of it all.

My ships are frozen sticks, they lay stuck to the floor/My wrists and my breasts are bleeding bricks, they don't float anymore .