Where in the world is Devendra Banhart?

By Lindsay Eanet

Published Oct. 2, 2007

San Francisco freak-folk ambassador Devendra Banhart has a lot to live up to. Not only must he continue maintaining his luscious facial hair, but by recording his fifth studio album, Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, in the mountains of California's Topanga Canyon, he also joins the ranks of Neil Young, Jim Morrison and other musical icons who have called the bohemian haven home. And every corner of this album, one of the most refreshingly eclectic and imaginative efforts of 2007, is filled with an unexplainable vastness, the kind of atmospheric, haunting power heard in Neil Young's "Don't Let It Bring You Down" or The Doors' "The End," a musical representation of the natural wonder of the California mountains.

But Banhart doesn't stop at the West Coast in finding his influences. The album is a veritable road trip from the Haight-Ashbury to the Catskills, from Rio de Janeiro to Caracas and back.

Banhart has never been one to shy away from experimenting with non-English lyrics and exotic folk influences. The delicate, melodic opening track, "Cristobal," combines Spanish lyrics with intricate classical acoustic guitar, as if the sound were wafting from a café in Barcelona. "Carmensita" carries within its airy rhythms an urban essence, as if this song could be performed by street musicians in Banhart's hometown of Caracas, Venezuela. The combination of vivid imagery and chugging percussion with a guitar-and-organ freak-out in the background makes for a sound that is both intriguing and authentically Banhart.

Banhart extends to include a third language on the album, singing in Portuguese on two tracks, including the haunting, dramatic "Rosa." On the acoustic "Samba Vexillographica," one of the album's strongest tracks, he reaches to both American and Brazilian influences, hearkening back to the greats of the Tropicalia movement, like Gilberto Gil, while also employing the guest skills of Rich Robinson, guitarist from The Black Crowes, who plays the charango.

In an unusual and highly ambitious move, Banhart also travels to the resorts of the Catskill mountains, relying on a combination of '50s doo-wop with Jewish folk music and humor for "Shabop Shalom." How many rock records this year will include references to the Talmud? Just this one, kids.

But some of his strongest results come from his return home to the psych-folk sounds of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco circa 1967. There is no artist today who can take the aesthetics of '60s folk-rock and bring them into this decade better than Banhart.

"Lover" shuffles along to hip-shaking rhythms, flower-power guitars and a catchy chorus.

And the rollicking "Tonada Yanomaminista" is CCR's "Suzie-Q" after the latter has been awake for a week straight, force-fed LSD and then released on a lush, green commune of cosmic-dancing ex-hippies.

The album's only weakness seems to come, unfortunately, from Banhart's overabundance of ambition. Although his albums usually seem to flow in an uncanny way despite the songs' individual disjointedness, some of the efforts here seem a little too overblown ("Shabop Shalom," most notably). On "I Remember," he tries to sound like a crooner at the piano, and though the results aren't bad, they don't feel entirely sincere.

Most of the time, though, overblown is just right. The eight-minute epic "Seahorse" is filled to the brim with rolling pianos and organs and a full-on guitar solo, all topped with guest vocals from Banhart's hero, Vashti Bunyan. The strong imagery on the track, conveyed through rambling, half-spoken-half-sung vocals from Banhart, made me think for a split second that I was, in fact, listening to The Doors.

In all its wonderful wooziness that evokes Jim Morrison's slippery, drunken poetry, Banhart definitely proves on Smokey that as his beard grows more luscious, his sound does too.