Young God Records
2002
Oh Me Oh My...
About This Album
The first thing that strikes you about Devendra Banhart is his utterly unique and soft voice, which seems a mix of Nick Drake and Marc Bolan. "Roots (If the Sky Were a Stone)" is a perfect example of this, as Banhart uses his vocals and an acoustic guitar to get his brief yet often memorable points across. Originally recorded on shoddy and broken four-track recorders, the songs have a definitive roughness and audible hiss on nearly all of them, giving them a certain authenticity rarely found. Cars can be heard driving past in "The Charles C. Leary," but that performance is only one of the many highlights here. A number of the tracks are less than or just over one minute in length, often stream-of-conscious poetry put to music. The fragility heard in "Nice People" resembles Victoria Williams but evolves into a Syd Barrett song structure, speaking of "wide a** suits and lion tattoos." Barrett can be discerned throughout the record, especially during "Gentle Soul." "Cosmos and Demos" lends itself more toward Pink Floyd performing something from Echoes, perhaps the acoustic-oriented "Fearless." Lyrically the songs are quite odd and occasionally nonsensical, particularly "Michigan State.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,8,9,10,11,13,15,16,17 and 21)

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