What We Have Been
When Devendra Banhart burst onto the freak-folk scene, he seemed for all the world like some magical, mystical, musical shaman. Knocking out his kooky micro-folk knock-offs of Tyrannosaurus Rex in ultra lo-fidelity, Banhart sounded like some endearing kook let loose on home recording equipment; a fellow too strange to fit into the regular, rectangular parameters of rock'n'roll.
Yet, before he had a chance to be enshrined into the isolationist hall of fame, Banhart proved himself to be quite the people person: not just in the way he rallied whole communities of freakishly folkie folks around him, but in the way his liveshows were often-silly celebrations, and his records started to sound like a bunch of dudes goofing around having a good time.
You don't need me to tell you that, when it comes to music-making, weird, isolated, and lonely trumps straight-up, gettin'-together, good-timery nearly every time. And, so, predictably enough, as Banhart normalized, his music became less interesting; the Beatles pastiches of 2005's Cripple Crow and the bro'd-out grooves of 2007's Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon sounding sadly establishment for a folkie who once seemed so freaky.
Banhart's sixth LP, What Will We Be, has more in common with Banhart's recent output than the discs of his salad days; or, truth be told, more in common with his 'gag' album as Megapuss, 2008's Surfing. But, where those records rankled a bit in their all-for-fun genre-hopping and goof-off vibes, there's a definite charm to Banhart's major-label debut that cannot be denied (or derided).
Selling the Change-Up
With What Will We Be, the ambling, genre-dabbling, pastichey feel isn't a product of lazy happenstance. Instead, it's written into the album's ambition.
The key cut, in regards to such, is "Angelika," a song built around a split personality. Its first half is low-key, sweetly swaying, woodwind-dappled, Sunday morning folk; its lyrics half-whispered by Banhart in English. This before "Angelika" reveals her other side: a sauntering, sashaying tropicália-inspired romp in which Banhart slurs his Spanish words with a tipsy theatricality.
"Chin Chin & Muck Muck" turns a similar trick. Across its five story-song minutes, the song reinvents itself restlessly. First it's a restrained, lounge-bar-friendly piano ballad; then it's a bongo-hopping folk joke. Then it skips back and forth between the two moods, with the transitory passages in the middle openly evoking both the tortured crooning of Scott Walker and the impish jestery of Os Mutantes.
Marshaled by producer Paul Butler —the guy behind retro-pop UK outfit The Bees (or, as they're legally known in the US, Band of Bees)— Banhart no longer feels like a prisoner to his whims. When What Will We Be hops from the glam'd up "16th & Valencia Roxy Music" to the almost Zeppelin-ish (or, if you're feeling nasty, Wolfmother-ish) "Rats" to the six-minute ambient hymnal "Maria Lionza," there's a sense of self-awareness to the musical dilettantism.
This time, these are no discursive digressions, but the very point of this musical study: this an album all about the change-up.
The Clothes That Make the Man
Like a heroine in a teen-film make-over montage, Banhart is gleefully trying on as many outfits as possible; each musical 'look' revealing a different side to his chameleonic personality.
Where this once felt like a betrayal for fans who bought into his first-ever guise —the beardo, weirdo waif, beamed down from another planet— now it feels as if, after a few years of particularly-public growing pains, Banhart is now at peace with himself.
This is Dedicated to the One I Love
Perhaps that's never more obvious than in the LP's elegantly beautiful companion-ballads "First Song for B" and "Last Song for B." Stripping away the bomp and bonhomie that prevails elsewhere across the set, here Banhart lays out his soul; authoring some of the least-cryptic lyrics of his career.
"First Song" finds Banhart, "in love" and taking "everything as a sign from God," offering his heart up, wholly, unto a lover. "And now I give myself to you alone/no more knives hang above me," he sings, before crying out in startling self-sacrifice: "Please destroy me! Please destroy me!"
If "First Song" is lost in the dementia of new love, "Last Song" is its thoughtful counterpart, aware of where this (possibly failing) love sits in the universe. Its hymnal is not to a lover, but to the passing of time; the rhythms of days and the cycles of seasons. With its chorus of bird calls resounding over the Topanga Canyon, it foregrounds nature in the spirit of Linda Perhacs' outsider-folkie classic Parallelograms.
At this point in Banhart's career, such vulnerability feels far more shocking than any genre-hopping. And What Will We Be is so much the better for being blessed by it.
Record Label: Warner Bros.
Release Date: October 27, 2009
