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Artist: Devendra Banhart
Album: Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon
There is an allure to this album almost magically enchanting by its arcane harmony. The more I hear the strange individualised songs of Banhart the more they wash their charm over me. There is nothing new to many of these 70's hippie absorbed melodies by a guy who clearly loves to make music; but the music he makes paint a lovely drifting picture as the songs hum along endearingly. Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon skips between genres and languages as often as Banhart explores his love life and reasserts himself as a free spirit -- in this case, a California free spirit; Banhart shacked up in a pastoral hillside home in the bohemian enclave of Topanga Canyon to create this lavishly produced and elegantly textured acoustic and avant-garde rock. He perfectly deludes the listener into his crepuscular 70's folk rock, pshychadelia roots that have clearly absorbed a myriad of influences from jazz, country and samba to name a few. Banhart appears determined not to pin himself down, and resolutely masters a technique of blending south and north American influences without allowing cliché's to bear hindrance on the culmination. In fact he plays with the cliché's, poking them with his musical perceptivity until they stray into new territory that ellipse their former prosaism. If Banhart has a failing it is that beyond his own slightly faint spectre-like presence he doesn't really have a style completely of his own so he can't help but wear his influences on his sleeve. These influences are mainly, however, admirable. On "Samba Vexillographica" he immerses himself in the world of revolutionary Brazilian psychedelia, which at once calls to mind Os Mutantes and Gil Gilberto. The centrepiece of the album is the eight-minute "Seahorse", which is an amiable enough Latinesque take on the country psych of The Byrds, before morphing into a Buddy Rich-like Blue Note jazz number and features rediscovered folk singer Vashti Bunyan. While not always reaching the momentum and solace on every track that we may hope from him, Smokey does treat the listener for over 70 minutes to amorous stammerings of a love sick beatnik who clearly has a passion for musical refinement. 1. Cristobal 2. So Long Old Bean 3. Samba Vexillographica 4. Sea Horse 5. Bad Girl 6. Sea Side 7. Shabop Shalom 8. Tonada Yanomaminista 9. Rosa 10. Saved 11. Lover 12. Carmensita 13. The Other Woman 14. Freely 15. I Remember 16. My Dearest Friend Review by Robin J.
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