|
By: Dennis Cook
One never knows where a conversation will begin, travel or end when speaking with Devendra Banhart. There's a strong feeling of being in uncharted waters when one wades into his depths. To wit, our recent chat was set up to discuss his focused, lovely new album, What Will We Be (released October 27 on Warner Bros.), but instead we begin with an etymology discussion about onomatopoeia. "A word like 'pulchritude' doesn't sound like beauty, but it is," says Banhart, who's a touch surprised at the elasticity of onomatopoeias. "I've been mislead... by the dictionary! Language is SO fun!"
Fun plays a major part in Banhart's overall makeup. He delights in playing with ideas, sensibilities, his own predilections, and considerably more. He's a serious cat who refuses to become calcified, and he shakes off stiffness and rote with a giggle and a grin. Like the Japanese, he delights in things that lend themselves to multiple meanings and interpretations.
"It keeps your mind a little more alert when you have more options and more possibilities. The natural cataloging of neural abilities is going to do that just processing input. I think the more possibilities there are the more you exercise that," says Banhart. "Weird sponge unearths gold."
Despite an ever-evolving relationship with Banhart, I still find myself caught flat-footed from time to time by his pronouncements. I can't rightly tell you what 'weird sponge unearths gold' means but I do think it's evocative as hell, a five-syllable fitness routine for those neural pathways he speaks of. And his music functions just the same. Linear isn't a route he follows very often, and even in his simplest moments there floats wispy complications. While What Will We Be is filed in the rock section, it slips borders like a grifter with a briefcase full of passports. Banhart is a citizen of the world AND a citizen of no world, and his music increasingly sounds like he's figured out what the Top 40 in his alternate universe sounds like. The new album carries one along in a seemingly effortless way, the gentle, love-bruised first half giving way to things more raucous and darkly sensual on Side B. 2009 is a crossroads year, a time when crucial choices in myriad realms must be addressed. And in its own subtle, slinky ways, What Will We Be tackles that zeitgeist head-on.
"I want it to be a question we all ask ourselves as individuals, as a species. And the way the title is written on the CD is important. It's written 'What Will' and underneath that 'We Be,' so there's two ways of reading it – there's the question and the answer. The answer to 'What Will We Be?' is 'What We Will Be.' I think there's something comforting about that," offer Banhart. "That question is a new question for us, collectively, to ask, 'What the fuck is going to happen?' I hate to say 2012 but I'm afraid."
 Devendra Banhart at Coachella by Lauren Dukoff |
It's all fine and well to be a dreamer and an artist but present and looming circumstances necessitate action, if only to actively prod at our sore spots and see what we can do to heal them.
"No joke. I'm with you 100-percent, but it's not all bleak. A time of change is exciting. Without destruction there's no change," Banhart observes. "What form that destruction will take is frightening because it's unknown, but it can also be a beautiful thing."
There's a love song on What Will We Be that announces, "Please destroy me," and so the cosmic truths we're circling around also plant themselves in the personal in Banhart's work. Here, love's positive evisceration is acknowledged.
"I don't know if that's a compliment or not [laughs]. 'Will you please destroy me.' I have no problem with that," says Banhart, who also manages to condense an entire love affair into two consecutive songs, "First Song for B" and "Last Song for B," on the new album. "I was a little worried about that, whether I should do that or not. The way I write lyrics is just an editing process. I take 10 pages and try to edit them down to two lines. I want to cut as much as possible to get to the essence of what I'm trying to communicate, and infuse it with some sort of potency at the same time."
"A work is finished when it takes on a life of its own and changes. I don't think a work is done when it's cemented, or when it petrifies, which is what happens eventually to a piece of music," continues Banhart. "I think music is truly finished when it becomes some undulating light liquid of sound that's not sedentary."
If there's one criticism of Banhart's earlier albums it's a tendency to run a little long, three or four songs over a comfortable listen. He admits that within his inner circle the one observation that continually comes up, usually when a friend is a little wasted, is, "Dude, too many songs." What Will We Be rectifies this with well sequenced succinctness, two 25-minute halves that yin 'n' yang organically.
 Devendra Banhart by Moses Berkson |
"This time we didn't have the distractions – we didn't have the opportunity for distractions – and this time we emerged from a fog. That's what comes to mind when I think of the last record [2007's Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon], a physical place where I, and most of the other people involved to some degree, were when we made it. Comparing it to the new one, that record is covered in fog to me. A man in a fog is a little bit lost and knows that things are coming apart a bit," says Banhart. "With [What Will We Be] we did shit like one hour vocal warm-ups before each take. That's what [co-producer] Paul Butler [The Bees] brought to the record. He'd say, 'You have to warm up your voice for an hour. We have to go over every note on the piano and go up and down a couple scales and match the piano note at different intervals. Once we do that for one hour then we can track.' My condition for doing that was that we also do a take with the first thing that comes out when I open my mouth in the morning. I don't come in saying, 'What up, dog?' or anything. The first take is the first utterance out of my mouth for that day. Then I'd do the vocal warm-up. I think that contrast helped create more interesting vocal dynamics."
The primitive yelp and a more studied form of practice both have a place inside Banhart's music, which thrives on variety, contradictions, and even conundrums. Somewhere in the middle of the maelstrom there's a point of connection, and there you find Devendra Banhart.
"I've yet to find that person, but I keep lookin' [laughs]. I don't know except to say that last time there was an element of being lost that didn't feel that way this time at all," Banhart says. "Each record is where we were at that time. I'm not ashamed of it or bummed about it. It is what it is."
Part of the solidity and flow of the new material may be a byproduct of several years of communing and gigging with the core band on What Will We Be - Noah Georgeson (guitar, vocals), Greg Rogove (percussion, vocals), Luckey Remington (bass, vocals) and Rodrigo Amarante (guitar, vocals). Each has become adept at translating Banhart's ideas into practice, as well as increasingly found a place for their own strong concepts and styles to shine somewhat within his schema.
"I'm very fortunate to know a lot of people in this band for as many as 12 years now, even before they started making music," says Banhart. "Greg I've known for almost seven years now. I met him at the time we were dating the CocoRosie sisters. Rodrigo I met at an Os Mutantes show; the only other person there that was crying and having a heart attack freaking out about Os Mutantes. I knew that was a guy I could talk to about music!"
Continue reading for more on Devendra Banhart...
|
