Devendra Banhart Rejoicing In The Hands CD

Personnel: Devendra Banhart (vocals, guitar, electric guitar, piano); Devendra Banhart; Paul Cantelon (violin); Julia Kent (cello); Joe McGinty (piano, organ); Thor Harris (vibraphone, percussion); Steve Moses (drums, percussion); Vashti Bunyan (vocals).
Audio Mixer: Doug Henderson.
Recording information: Lynn Bridges' Home (2003); Seizures Palace, Brooklyn, NY (2003).
When Michael Gira's Young God label issued Devendra Banhart's glorious home-recorded debut, Oh Me Oh My, on an unsuspecting world, its gorgeous yet sparse primitivism, complete outsider lyric sensibilities, and infectious melodies grabbed hold of listeners all over the world. It offered them a bona fide fissure between popular and underground American culture. Banhart's aesthetic is no pose; his iconoclastic songwriting could not be farther away from officially sanctioned "alternative" music. However, given the unanticipated coverage and success of the album (by modest indie standards, folks, not those dictated by the biz), a quandary was presented in how to follow it up. Should his new songs -- and there were many -- be recorded in exactly the same way to preserve the notion of "authenticity?" Or should he not be penalized by having to adhere to the same economic realities, and be nurtured as the developing artist he is? Wisely, Gira and Banhart saw through the smokescreen what a word like "authentic" implies. Banhart's songs are the authentic outsider article even if he were to record them in Barry White's studio, so why punish for the sake of a media construct? Gira and Banhart chose a simple but very effective recording studio in engineer Lynn Bridges' house on the Georgia/Alabama border as their location, getting down 57 songs(!) and choosing 32 for two different albums from the treasure trove. Rejoicing in the Hands is the first of these albums -- another will be issued in the fall of 2004. Simply stated, it is a stunner, form start to finish. Banhart's Muse may be furiously active, but she is tender all the same. The sonic ambience on this disc is breathtaking. Gira and Banhart brought the master tapes back to Brooklyn for some minimal and tasteful overdubbing -- a guitar track here, a cello or trumpet there, a piano ghosting through the mix in another place, some spare drumming, hand percussion or vibes somewhere else. Over it all, though, is Banhart's reedy tenor and edgy, angular guitar playing with its hypnotic insistence carrying the tunes from deep in the interior of his image and sound world to the fore, where listeners can encounter and engage with them. Elements of blues, ragtime, Appalachian rural styles, country music, European and Celtic folk songs: all weave in and out of one another in a seamless yet crackling whole, each of them serving their role in articulating Banhart's sublimely prismatic, loopy vision. Singling out tracks or quoting from his words would amount to nothing more than sacrilege. This music is simply rendered, to be sure, but unspeakably profound and mercurial; it's funny, warm, heartbreaking, and evocative of another place and time. There are glimpses here of Greil Marcus' "old weird America," the all-but-visible inner terrain that informed certain spiritual, social, and aesthetic elements in our culture. Banhart's music is utterly unselfconscious and poetic. Rejoicing in the Hands is a whole -- each song an inseparable part of an offering for listeners to be, quite literally, enchanted and even awed by. ~ Thom Jurek
Acclaimed eccentric singer/songwriter Devendra Banhart takes a step out of the lo-fi basement and into the hi-fi living room for this critically lauded album. During a span of only 10 days, Banhart recorded more than 30 songs (co-produced by former Swans leader Michael Gira) that were subsequently divided between this record and its companion disc, NINO ROJO. Those already familiar with that gonzo folk masterwork will find this to be equally worthy (and vice versa).
"Will Is My Friend," "PoughkeRolling Stone (4/15/04, p.151) - 3 stars out of 5 - "Sounding like the work of a high-pitched Tom Waits, Banhart's second album is full of alternately fragile and quirky folk songs..."
Q (p.94) - 4 stars out of 5 - "[E]ven more mesmeric and deep into Nick Drake territory: intense and slightly damaged, especially on the stark love songs..."
Uncut (p.90) - 4 stars out of 5 - "REJOICING...feels like the work of a man in the midst of a prodigious creative spurt."
Uncut (p.74) - Ranked #26 in Uncut's "Best New Albums of 2004" - "[A] mystical trip into an eerie neverland of joyful bohemian blues."
Magnet (p.87) - "With his trembling tenor, Banhart continues to traverse the surreal, telling the tales of laughing lemon trees, milky suns and dancing teeth....It's a mesmerizing journey through the dark heart of Brooklyn's lost boy."
Mojo (Publisher) (p.106) - 4 stars out of 5 - "Banhart wraps his songs in a gorgeously quavering warble that seems lifted right off some blues mama's dusty 78. A nearly flawless left-field folk."