XL Recordings
2007
Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon
About This Album
In the early days of Devendra Banhart's career, his ghostly voice singing down the phone and captured on four track was more than enough to lend the eerie mysticism required for his nonsensical material (of course, it didn't hurt that his voice was bewitching no matter the lyrical content). As he gradually acquired confederates and the ability to record in studios, the clear problem was going to be retaining that same ghostly personality that made his early recordings so special. Decamped to a woodsy compound nestled in Topanga Canyon, and an enterprising home studio built within, manned by early champion Noah Georgeson, Banhart has weathered the storm of accessibility very well. Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon is many things -- perhaps too many things, but its successes outnumber its failures, and it essentially solves the problems inherent in confining a free-form singer to time signatures and arrangements and rhythms imposed by outsiders. It's also a success in that it finds him more comfortable within those confines than 2005's Cripple Crow, his first full-band record. Of the many things Smokey Rolls is, first of all it's his White Album, as he marshals his many influences into a mural of closely drawn portraits, whether it's Victor Jara on the opener, "Cristobal," Gilberto Gil on the deep polyrhythms of "Samba Vexillographica," Jewish wedding music and Borscht Belt comedy in equal measure on "Shabop Shalom," or, in the oddest combination, Dave Brubeck and Grand Funk (separately, not together) on the eight-minute "Sea Horse" (with backing vocals from another influence, the winsome Vashti Bunyan).
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 and 12)

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