Rejoicing In The Hands

Uncut - 4 stars out of 5 - "REJOICING...feels like the work of a man in the midst of a prodigious creative spurt." Mojo - 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." Q - 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..." Rolling Stone - 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..." Uncut - Ranked #26 in Uncut's "Best New Albums of 2004" - "[A] mystical trip into an eerie neverland of joyful bohemian blues." Magnet - "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." NME (22/05/04, p.65) - 9 (out of 10) - "Banhart makes music that could charm the birds from the trees such is the uncomplicated beauty of his songs."

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," "Poughkeepsie," and other songs benefit from some string and piano overdubs, but essentially, this is solo Banhart, with his seemingly tossed-off yet strangely anachronistic tunes creeping out like incense-perfumed air. Banhart's deft acoustic guitar finger-picking and vocal warbling show the influence of country blues masters like Blind Willie McTell and Skip James, while another of his idols, reclusive 1970s folk icon Vashti Bunyan, appears on the title track. Whether observing how a friend's hair is like "Insect Eyes" or rattling off the Elvis Presley filmography, Banhart purrs with such a mystic, neo-hippie vibe that he could lull even the staunchest nihilist to a love-in.|

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

マイケル・ギラ（元スワンズ）のレーベル、ヤング・ゴッドが贈る最強のホープ。とにかくそのドラッギーな歌の素晴らしいこと。このニュー・アルバムではストリングスを隠し味に、まるで曇りガラス越しに見た世界のような奇妙な美しさが歌声からこぼれ落ちる。さらに今回の注目は、伝説の女性シンガー・ソングライター、ヴァシティ・バニアンの参加!　彼女の変わらない歌声に両者の磁場は絡み合い、ケシの花咲く楽園が誕生。
bounce (C)村尾 泰郎