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| Contributo per / Contribution for: ffwd_mag#4 | |||||||
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Devendra Banhart Frank Bauer Johannes Beck Paolo Benvenuto Peter Beste Black Sun Productions Blu Dafne Boggeri BombTheDot Books On Tape Philip Brophy Cane CapoVolto Carlos Casas Riccardo Conti DDD Camilla Canida Donzella Dill Andrea Dojmi John Duncan Ericailcane Es/Sami Sänpäkkilä Jason Forrest / Donna Summer Gelitin Amos Gitai Globalgroove Mariusz Grygielewicz Estelle Hanania Laura Henno John Hooper Giuseppe Ielasi irr. app. (ext.) Kinkaleri Elyasaf Kowner Marzia Migliora Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo / ( r ) Mou, Lips! Mudboy O.lamm Ogino Knauss OvO Paper Resistance Gabriele Porta Qubo Gas Ugo Rondinone Moira Ricci Marc Richter & 2Bunnies Royal Art Lodge Davide Savorani Michael Segal Jim Shaw Shit & Shine Claudio Sinatti Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio Son Of Clay Carola Spadoni Sun City Girls Peter Sutherland Terre Thaemlitz The Buddy System Tu M' Twine Kaari Upson Un Caddie Renversé Dans L'Herbe Nico Vascellari Woods |
Cripple Crow is Devendra Banhart’s fourth proper studio album and his first release in this country through XL Recordings. Devendra Banhart exploded on the international music scene three years ago quickly winning a coterie of devoted fans as well as an unusually hefty amount of critical kudos with his debut release Oh Me Oh My The Way The Day Goes By The Sun Is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Lovesongs Of The Christmas Spirit on Young God Records. The critics’ acclaim and the size of his audience both at home and abroad increased dramatically with the release of 2004’s Rejoicing In The Hands and Nino Rojo CDs. Cripple Crow was released September ’05 to overwhelming critical acclaim from publications including Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Mojo, Magnet, and Paste and extensive features in Harp, Devil In The Woods and many others. He then toured with his “Hairy Fairy” band filling large halls across the U.S. Cripple Crow was recorded at Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, NY late Winter ’05 with regular sidekick Andy Cabic, Noah Georgeson and Thom Monahan joining Devendra in the studio; the latter co- engineered & co-produced and the former co-engineering, co-producing and also contributed sundry instrumental and vocal accompaniment. This new album finds Devendra continuing his extraordinary growth as a writer, vocalist and musician. Songs like “Now That I Know” and “I Do Dig a Certain Girl” among others provide more of the hushed, mysterious acoustic alchemy that delighted listeners on preceding set though the new tunes show still greater artistic depth and delicacy. Other performances are more elaborate featuring a range of electric instruments, rock rhythm section, sitar, flute, violin, cello, exotic percussion, et cetera. Banhart and company evoke a tribe of sun-dappled psychedelic gypsies on “When They Come,” while “Long Haired Child” has a more acid-damaged garage-band cut and thrust. “Santa Maria Da Feira,” “Quedate Luna” and “Luna De Margarita” are gorgeous ballads sung in lilting Spanish which was Devendra’s native tongue until his teenaged years. All in all Cripple Crow witnesses Banhart furthering his mastery of the acoustic/experimental idiom he helped pioneer as well providing himself with fresh challenges an artist. Devendra Banhart was born in 1981 in Houston, TX then moved with his family to live with his grandmother in Caracas Venezuela. When his mother remarried, the family relocated to Encinal Canyon in California where he first began to play music and learned to speak English. He attended the San Francisco Art Institute but dropped out without earning a degree. Banhart’s first public performance was at the wedding of two friends Jerry Elvis and Bob The Crippled Comic. He then began a period of globe-hopping moving to Los Angeles, then Paris, back San Francisco, then to Los Angeles writing songs and performing when and wherever he could manage. Devendra began making waves in underground music circles in 2002 with his debut album Oh Me Oh My The Way The Day Goes By The Sun Is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Lovesongs Of The Christmas Spirit on Young God Records. The album was compiled by Young God owner Michael Gira from a voluminous collection of audio Post-It notes of songs Banhart had accumulated whilst hoboing around the world. These song-sketches had been recorded on sundry answering machines and borrowed cassette machines during several years of international vagrancy. Over the course of 2003, Oh Me Oh My… became a grass roots sensation attracting a passionate and rapidly growing audience as well as abundant praise from the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Arthur Magazine, Rolling Stone, LA Weekly, Magnet and Jane among others. Two extensive U.S. tours followed, one with his friend Entrance and the other opening for the Angels Of Light as well as sitting in with them on guitar. After these tours, Banhart retreated to rural Georgia with co-producer Gira and spent two solid weeks sitting on a stool recording from daybreak to sundown laying down some 32 tunes. A small amount of additional instrumentation and backing vocals were added afterwards in NYC but the two albums that resulted from these sessions, Rejoicing In The Hands and Nino Rojo were primarily showcases for Banhart’s deft acoustic guitar work and increasingly sophisticated singing and writing. When these albums were released in Spring and Fall 2004 respectively, Devendra’s following became still larger and more zealous and two headlining tours (the first solo and the second with backing group) packed venues across the country and overseas. Meanwhile, journalists on both sides of the Atlantic were unstinting in their praise in publications like the Sunday New York Times, Mojo, Spin, Washington Post, The Wire, Harp, Village Voice, Paste, Interview and Elle Magazine to name but a few. In England he appeared on national television on the prestigious “Later…With Jools Holland” performing between Alanis Morrissette and Alicia Keyes. In the meantime, Banhart was gaining recognition as a visual artist as well. His distinctive, minutely inked, often enigmatic drawings appeared in a group show at the Canada Gallery in lower Manhattan Summer of ‘04, then uptown at the Roth Horowitz Gallery in his first solo show later in the year. Devendra’s artwork graced the covers of all three of his full-length CD releases and one EP, appeared in national publications including BB Gun and Magnet and a selection was self-published in book form as Light Aligns. He also became known as an outspoken champion of other musicians, mainly the uncommon and underexposed among his contemporaries as well as musical forebearers. He regularly cited singers like Vashti Bunyan (whom he recorded a duet with as the title track of Rejoicing In The Hands), Linda Perhacs and Clive Palmer as important inspirations and brought them among others to the attention of wider audiences than they’d experienced in decades. He has been generous in his public support of other young, adventurous musicians as well (the list runs to phone book length) which has been a key factor in the public and press’ acknowledg ement of the far flung, grass roots community of musicians loosely bound by a mutual love of eccentric vintage acoustic music (ala Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music) AND formidable avant-garde experimentation; this has since been documented in publications such as Spin, Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, the Boston Phoenix and numerous others. Devendra Banhart has emerged as one of the most fascinating, unpredictable and inspiring artists of his generation and with Cripple Crow he continues to surprise and delight an ever-increasing audience of fans and critics alike. |
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