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Best of 2004 (so far):
N.E.R.D. - "Fly or Die"
Devendra Banhart - "Rejoicing in the Hands" and "Nino Rojo"
Magnetic Fields - "i"
Black Keys - "Rubber Factory"
Blood Brothers - "Crimes"
Jason Forrest - "The Unrelenting Songs of the 1979 Post Disco Crash"
Keren Ann - "Not Going Anywhere"
A.C. Newman - "The Slow Wonder"
Jewels & Binoculars Plays the Music of Bob Dylan - "Floater"
Air - "Talkie Walkie"
Lali Puna - "Faking the Books"
Fiery Furnaces - "Blueberry Boat"
The Streets - "A Grand Don't Come For Free"
Ghost - "Hypnotic Underworld"
Dave Douglas - "Strange Liberation"
Sonic Youth - "Sonic Nurse"
M.I.A. and Diplo - "Piracy Funds Terrorism Vol. 1"
The Futureheads - s/t
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Wednesday, November 17, 2004
I found an mp3 bootleg of Devendra doing that medley with the R. Kelly song ("Step In the Name of Love") on a French blog. So get it while the gettin's good.
- o. nate
Monday, November 8, 2004
If there's any new artist this year who doesn't seem to be suffering from a lack of hype, surely it is Devendra Banhart. Doing a Google search on his name turns up reams and reams of web commentary, most of it gushingly positive. Yet outside the realm of indie cognoscenti, he is of course still hardly a household name. Most people I mention his name to have never heard of him. There's nothing surprising in this, since you wouldn't necessarily expect such a decidedly odd body of work to attract a mainstream audience. Yet there is something about Devendra that makes one imagine that he could break out of the indie ghetto and achieve a broader level of success.
Last night I saw him and his supporting band perform at the Bowery Ballroom. It was a sold-out crowd, and by and large they seemed to welcome Devendra with something close to ecstatic fervor. He is a natural performer, who is loose and confident on-stage, and who really seems to come alive in front of an audience without seeming either needy of attention or show-offy. He ad-libs and clowns around with his bandmates, and they seemed to be having a great time. However, despite (or because of) that, the music didn't in any way come across as being ragged or half-assed, and they were capable of summoning a great intensity of focus. The band could primarily be described as a folk-blues-country-rock thang, but they also managed to cover a reggae tune ("You're Gonna Need Me") and R. Kelly without sounding silly or the least bit ironic.
Even though Devendra's mike was loaded up with reverb, it was clear that he posesses great resources of vocal talent. This was even more clear to me seeing him in person than it had been on his recordings of this year ("Rejoicing in the Hands" and "Nino Rojo"). Songs that I thought were nice enough but not spectacular on record, for instance "A Sight To Behold", acquired more power and resonance in live performance. This was one that he did solo, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, and the emotion that he infused into the lyrics brought the song up a notch in my estimation.
Another trick that Devendra did in the show was to change around the lyrics of his songs. It perhaps says more about me than it does about Devendra that this reminded me immediately of another better-known singer-songwriter, Bob Dylan. I don't even know if Devendra is a Dylan fan (someone in the club must have been, because they played a track off of the "Basement Tapes" over the PA while the band was setting up) but his obvious facility with words and restless determination to continue shaping and molding them, even after most songwriters would consider a song finished, reminded me of the elder musical icon.
There is a sense of childlike wonder that runs through Devendra's songs, even when he deals with grown-up topics like sex and death. There is a joyousness in the physicality of the body and the senses, a sense of discovery in nature, an exhortation to take it all in and not miss a thing. At one point, as the band was winding down the song "Be Kind" he kept repeating those two words over and over in an increasingly insistent manner - one almost got the feeling that he was going to start preaching. It was an unusual and slightly awkward moment, but the type of awkwardness that jolts you awake and makes you curious, and it seems to me to show the bedrock of seriousness that runs beneath Devendra's sometimes playful and whimsical lyrics.
The expansiveness and confidence with which Devendra and the band stretched out and reinterpreted the songs strengthened my belief that he is a major new talent. One of the doubts that I had from listening to the two albums from this year, as good as they are, was whether he would have the imagination and resourcefulness to expand out of the minimalist corner he was painting himself into. Now that I've heard him and his songs in these different and wonderful incarnations, I am confident that he will, and I look forward to hearing what he will do next.
(Random and irrelevant celeb-spotting sidebar: David Byrne was standing near me for the first half of the show)
- o. nate
Monday, August 23, 2004
Nine Unarguable Reasons why Synchronised Swimming is the Only True Olympic Sport
- o. nate
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