After whiling away this spring recording and carousing in Topanga Canyon - the lush landscape and former home of Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Charles Manson - Devendra Banhart has emerged with a new album as fertile as the environment and imagination that gave it life. Pried from his beloved California mountainside to tour in support of his best work yet, Banhart's gypsy-folk bandwagon will take a brief sojourn to the District this Monday night to fill Sixth & I Historic Synagogue with his haunting vocals and the exotic filigree of the charango.
Banhart first received critical acclaim in 2002 with his debut "Oh Me Oh My," an album composed of songs he initially recorded over the phone on the answering machine of Michael Gira of Young God Records while traversing the world. "Rejoicing in the Hands" and "Ni¤o Rojo" followed in 2004, the former featuring folk legend Vashti Bunyan on the title track. Banhart then moved to XL Records in 2005 with "Cripple Crow," taking the hearts of more critics and fans with him.
Banhart's newest Seussian opus and fourth full-length album, "Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon," explores his lust for exploring the world and the deepest recesses of the human condition. Where his past albums leave no doubt that Banhart has mastered the frontiers of folk music and acoustic strumming, the sturdy skeleton of Banhart's solid folk core is newly fleshed out by a backing band of independent spirits: Bunyan joins Banhart again on "My Dearest Friend," Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal duets on "Cristobal" and the Black Crows' Chris Robinson plays the charango - a South American mandolin made from an armadillo shell - on "Samba Vexillographica," an ode to pre-Castro tropicalia and conga that'll find even the most reluctant Banhart convert shaking his or her booty like Lola at the Copacabana.
In fact, "Smokey" as a whole is at once foreign and familiar, with songs like "Seahorse," which builds for five minutes before breaking into a Neil Young/Hendrix hybrid guitar jam as Devendra pulls out wild child poet laureate vocals reminiscent of Jim Morrison and Iggy Pop. "Saved" is another noteworthy track; a composition smacking of irony and country colloquialisms crooned over a gospel choir, reminiscent of the Velvet Underground's drug-induced cheer and optimism.
Irony and humor, true to Banhart's fashion, are in no short supply, either. "Shabop Shalom," sounding like something Buddy Holly could have co-written with Roy Orbison, is a comparatively anachronistic tale of a Tel Aviv temptress, with stream-of-consciousness lyrics, ridiculous religious allusions and a bass line as deep as Banhart's newly vibrato-less timbre: no longer the frolicking imp child of Mother Nature with a wavering croon but the deep-timbered commander of an alternate universe perched atop his Topanga Canyon roost, rumbling, "I've watched you cakewalk / To the Immaculate Conception / For far too long."
Banhart also uses his new album to explore his more sensual side, assuming the role of a spurned Latin lover in "Bad Girl," a heavily subdued yet seething sexual plea to a long-gone lover. Banhart's gentle vibrato becomes a gravelly near-James Brown roar as he oozes, "Mama I am waiting / Waiting / But I'm still holdin' on." On "Lover," his most explicitly sexual song to date, Banhart wraps a disco beat and vocals in the choppy, poppy guitar work of '60s-era Beatles, while not-so-innocently crooning the lyrics "I wanna open your door / And love you 'til you're sore" and many more explicit references to bodily fluids and fellatio. But, as he assures the listener, "It feels so right it can't be wrong."
With "Smokey," Devendra isn't tumbling down into any abyss - he's teetering on the edge of the Andes, under a giant sycamore, his feet dangling into the Pacific. All the while, he is wielding the Painted Valley for a brush, swathing his songs in as many deep reds, blues and purples as he can milk from this world. The decades of musical history pushing at his back are met with the fierce winds of possibility that keep him aloft. While his new album is indeed a triumph, for Devendra Banhart, the best is yet to come.
