Devendra Banhart's Nonesuch debut, Mala, took shape in his own "tiny tiny home" in Los Angeles, where Banhart until recently resided. He and longtime cohort Noah Georgeson produced it together , playing most of the instruments themselves. The arrangements, beguiling yet relatively unadorned, harken back to Banhart's earliest recordings, the do-it-yourself tracks that first garnered him acclaim a decade ago.
The songs, themselves, though, are less fractured fairy tales than real or artfully imagined depictions of the vicissitudes of romance, even if Banhart does lace his often seductive delivery with liberal doses of surreal horror.
For Banhart, his career remains "an adventure and exploration." Mala reveals a natural maturation of his style, especially as a singer. Banhart admits, " I don't really take care of my voice, but just like with playing guitar, you get more familiar with it, and you get better at it. I've always said that I'm very good at not knowing how to play the guitar but, really, it's just that I'm very comfortable with the utter uncertainty of my approach."
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