got this yesterday
Seems to be quite under the radar these days but I dig everything he puts out. Great production and versatile low key charm to the instrumentation on his records. Lyrics alternately silly and romantic.
Any Banhart fans around?
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Really pleasantly surprised by this. I liked Mala, and this is almost a continuation of that sound, the production is consistently gorgeous and it’s got a lovely late night feel to it. He was great at EOTR too…his current live sound mirrors the sound of this actually.
Before persevering with him prior to EOTR, I kind of dismissed him as more style than substance…however all of Rejoicing…, Cripple Crow and Nino Rojo are high quality freak-folk albums…and now this new sound is paying dividends too.
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Amazing artist. Never released a bad record, and every record he’s released has a noticably different tone or mood. People will tell you the major label album was a step down, but i think it’s solid. Still listen to ‘Mala’ at some point most weeks. Think i’d probably consider ‘Rejoicing…’ to be his masterpiece, but ‘Smokey Rolls…’ is probably my favourite. Sort of consider it his ‘Pink Moon’. Looking forward to this a lot.
Yeah Smokey is my favourite too, don’t think it left my CD player for about 6 months. For some reason critics seem to dislike his genre hopping but i reckon he always puts a lot of detail in the music which takes it beyond pastiche.
Loved the kind of ‘low keyness’ of Mala - sounded like he was just enjoying himself.
Does feel that now that kind of ‘freak folk’ fad has moved on people have kind of forgotten about him, but as mentioned above he’s consistently great.
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Big fan of rejoicing in the hands, listened to that like fuck at the time.
Not listened to in years, gonna do so tomorrow. Thanks for the reminder
6.6 on Pitchfork. A bit low for me, especially as Mala was 7.6, but I know I shouldn’t care about such things. It has received good reviews elsewhere.
Still need time to live with it but it seems as good as Mala if you were into that. It kinda takes the German electro bit from My Fine Petting Duck and integrates it more into the whole sound. Also added koto (Japanese guitar thing) licks on some of the tracks.
Struggling to get into this. There are three or four absolute stinkers on it. Think he’s been listenin to too much Donovan. Far too playful in parts. Nowhere near as good as Mala.
That is very disappointing.
It probably helps not listening to much Donovan in the past though. I hope you grow go like it through perseverance
Havent listened to a note of this geezer’s music in over a decade. Any of this any good for non-diehards?
Both this and Mala are probably his most accessible records yet. If I were introducing new listeners, I’d use his latest work as an introduction before moving onto his more dense earlier work. Listen to this song, if you like it then you’re on the right path.
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Been listening to this at work quite a bit. Lovely stuff!
I also agree with above - Mala and this are easily his two most accessible records but they haven’t lost the odd charm of his earlier material.
I’m pretty sure the daft spoken bit in Fig In Leather is a homage to this…
reminds me a lot of it anyway