Ever since he stepped onto the music scene in 2002, Devendra Banhart was instantly crowned king of the freak folk movement. It was a crown he wore uneasily and a label that never quite fit. With his new album Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, his latest since 2005s Cripple Crow, Banhart is determined to not only shake off the crown and lable but crush them to bits as well. While this new disc won’t, by any means, push him into the limelight of the mainstream, it does find the modern folk icon exploring some new grooves.
Banhart recorded “Smokey” in Topanga Canyon in California, which has also housed music luminaries like Joni Mitchell and The Doors. He borrowed their easy breezy So. Cal hippie vibe rolled in his own spicy flavors (Banhart spent time in Venezuela as a child) and came up with a sound called Tropicalia. Like his folky predecessors, the singer/songwriter is going for a relaxed vibe. His vocals are warbled, whispered – so delicate at times that they seem to evaporate into thin air but still, they are never anything less than hypnotic. On the Nick Drake-esque song “So Long Old Bean”, Banhart sing/ sighs about floating “downstream on a moonbeam” creating an early-Americana beauty of song that could easily have come squeaking out over the airwaves back when radios doubled as pieces of furniture.
The Spanish-flavored “Samba Vexillographica” keeps things swaying and moving along at a gentle yet determined pace while “Tonada Yanomaminista” is more of a rock song with a sloppy sound – think Mick Jagger a few decades ago. Banhart even goes out on a limb to play a lounge-like crooner on “Shabop Shalom”. For all the styles he tries on, the hippie-esque singer/songwriter conquers most of them but at 16 tracks in length, the album does tend to get lost in its own mellowness at times. Four or five siesta-like songs in a row can tend to make you sleepy – even if the pieces are pretty and hummable.
The album rebounds towards the end though with a gorgeous song called “Freely”. The mood is fanciful and the strings are lilting as Banhart delivers one of his best vocal performances ever singing lyrics like “you ever seen a thing as kind as the wind blowing by / I've never seen anything as wise as the sun that shines freely . . . freely”. |