Devendra Banhart - Rejoicing In The Hands
Rejoicing In The Hands has that rare timeless quality- it will sound as fresh and new as it is today forever.
If eccentricity really is the new black, Mr. Devendra Banhart would be blacker than tar at midnight. Banhart is a San Francisco-based art school graduate psychedelic folk genius who looks like Jesus, and this concept album (don't run away!) about an old woman saving a cornfield by making sweet love to it watched over by floating red beards is hardly what you'd call normal, is it? However, if such albums are the result of this burgeoning insanity, sign me up for a lifetime of taking pills and eating mashed bananas, for Rejoicing In The Hands is simply brilliant.
The concept is so simple it's beautiful: the majority of the songs on this album are just Banhart, an acoustic guitar and the occasional string section. The lyrics have been described as 'stream-of-conscious,' and this is a spot-on description. The surrealistic ramblings lend Banhart a sort of experience to his work-whilst he rambles about Elvis songs seemingly at random, you get a sense he has been around a lot longer than his tender years suggest. And then there is his voice. Oh, his voice. Angels singing day-long celestial symphonies could not compete with the simplest of songs on this album. Impossibly, his voice is a cross between the wide-eyed innocence of a twelve-year-old boy, the age and gravitas of an eighty-year-old man, the falsetto of Jeff Buckley and the vibrato of an ancient crooner. Absolutely perfect, glorious, beautiful. Adjectives have failed me. Buy this album, and you feel like every word, every syllable, and every letter is directed at you. Yes, it is that good.
The songs on Rejoicing In The Hands carry on the same theme of eccentricity. “This Is The Way” is a jolly song about how Banhart lives his life- He shares his breakfast, the soppy sod. Album highlight “It's a Sight To Behold” is a wonderful piece of alt-folk-pop-psychedelia. I'll run out of hyphens at this rate. Slower moments such as “Fall” and “The Body Breaks” do not feel out of place, and can bring a tear to the eye of the manliest of men. Banhart writes the songs on this album that Beck tried, and failed to do on his recent dirge Sea Change. “Dogs They Make Up The Dark” is a similar treat; warm and compelling. I see Banhart on a porch in fifty years time, playing on a rocking chair to an audience of rapt grandchildren; for Rejoicing In The Hands has that rare timeless quality- it will sound as fresh and new as it is today forever.
Whilst a folk album featuring a solo acoustic guitar would get somewhat samey in the hands of your run-of-the-mill folk band, Banhart is always twisting the songs into those that pull the fantastic trick of sounding completely different whilst never alienating you. For example, we get the sweet nostalgia of “This Is The Way” and then the savage thundering voodoo of “Poughkeepsie,” and yet the two sound exactly the same. Truly, this is the sign of an excellent songwriter. Banhart also endearingly keeps in the outtakes of the recording; you occasionally hear him messing up, and the production team laughing. This would be annoying with any other band, but it adds certain humanity to Banhart's otherwise extraterrestrial recording.
There are better recorded albums, there are better production techniques, and the mixing is minimal at best. However, Banhart proves you need none of these to make an album of simplistic, uncommon beauty. Like Simon & Garfunkel with twice the acid and nearly that many quality tunes, Banhart proves to be the perfect antidote to the recent glut of soulless garage rock. To put it simply, this album is amazing. I have played and played it and I have yet to get tired of it. It may be hard to find, but I urge you to go out RIGHT NOW to buy it. Buy one for your mum, your dad, your sibling, your goldfish and the man who cleans your windows. If anyone deserves to be elevated to rock royalty, it's this man. Mr. Banhart, it's time for you to become huge.
(Young God / XL Recordings)