Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon

by

Devendra Banhart

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Giving off the same earthy vibe as his terrific Cripple Crow, Devendra Banhart taps into the good vibrations of California's Topanga Canyon. The result is the friskiest and most musically solid album of his unashamedly eclectic career. Songs bounce between 60's psychedelic to the Jackson 5-ish Motown of "Lover" to 50's novelty of "Shabop Shalom" and it's humorous "wonder wonder who, who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls" quip, and it all works like a dreamy California morning. Even the Spanish language songs meld effortlessly into the whole of the CD.

Banhart is also getting more adventurous. While his album is richer musically than anything he has done before, he is hardly getting slick. "Smokey Rolls..." seems far more dependant on feel than fidelity (there are times when his vocal yelps distort annoyingly), and I would guess that the vocal pitch correction softwear was NOT brought in to smooth over the errors. All the better. With a standout six minutes of a song like "Sea Horse" making music sound communal again, "Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon" is a minor miracle; an album by an artist who is willing to throw commercial cautions to the wind and make a full length CD that holds together as a piece. Since most artists seem bound and determined to do nothing but create jingles, singles and ring-tones lately, Devendra Banhart must now be counted as a serious contender as a maker of progressive popular music.