By rights, the whole freak folk new weird Amerifishtronica thing should be wrapping up any minute now — and it probably is. Lavender Diamond’s next album is supposed to be all danceparty, Golden Ball are morphing into a Moog-weilding krautrock ensemble before our very eyes, and shit, not for nothing, Devendra Banhart has already progressed from freak to glam and now, onward to Tropicalia revivalist/California canyon wastrel. Yes, he looks like Peaches (see top right corner), but he’s kind of starting to sound like Harry Nilsson. His new record and this week’s featured one on The Philebrity Player, Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, puts the lime in the coconut and drinks ‘em both together. It has this weird far-away sound — think John Phillips’ John, The Wolf King Of L.A. — but it’s also punchy: Dev howls through reverb, genre-hops left and right, and generally reminds everyone that his records have consistently gotten better. If his last record, Cripple Crow, was the dirty-fingernailed glam one, we’d venture to say this is the spooky Os Mutantes one, from ominous flute to whispered Portugese to cardboard-box guitar-shredding. We would have never believed this a few years back when his face graced the Sunday Arts & Leisure section of the Times for 138 weeks straight, but Banhart, to everyone’s surprise (we think), has sticking power. Now if we could only do something about that beard.
Click here to listen to Devendra Banhart on The Philebrity Player now!
Devendra Banhart plays TLA at The Fillmore on September 29.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 at 3:25 pm.