indy cd & vinyl

DEVENDRA BANHART—SMOKEY ROLLS DOWN THUNDER CANYON

Banhart has become one of the main faces of the neo/freak/psych folk revival of the new millennium. With his quavering, vibrato-led voice being an instrument of beauty, and his undeniable song-writing talent, this is no accident. But on Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon.” his fourth or fifth album (depending on how you count EPs), Banhart has put out a record that both encompasses and transcends the limits of any such genre tags. Smokey… has beautiful, lilting sambas, show-tune melodies, doo-wop stylings, gospel choruses, gentle reggae, white-boy blues that recalls both prime period Traffic and late period Beatles, as well as gentle folk songs. Indeed, at 16 songs long, Banhart’s latest is stuffed to the bursting point with musical gems, with instrumentation including strings, horns, and woodwinds. But with that voice, each song sounds like it is coming from  a delicate, almost other-worldy  place, a place that Banhart wants to show us can include childlike naivete (the brilliant, multi-part “Seahorse”), dumb fun (“My Shabop Shalom Baby”), sigh-inducing beauty (“Samba Vexillographica”), love-fuelled longing (‘Bad Girl”), and mature reflection (“I Remember”). Smokey… is an album that creates it’s own idiosyncratic world and invites us to enter into it via Banhart’s stunning musical gifts. And once you visit, you’ll want to keep coming back.