Devendra Banhart - Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon (XL)
3/5
By: Thomas Hannan
There isn't anything particularly wrong with any single one of the songs on Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon. Not one of them. If you were to hear them in isolation, you'd herald this as a return to form after the mammoth 'Cripple Crow' which suffered from a lack of focus but was in places rather brilliant. But whilst its follow up is decidedly serene, there's very little that's particularly exciting about it. How much of a problem that is will depend on the attention span of the listener.
The opening 'Cristobal', sung in Spanish, is the dawn of the impenetrable haze in which this record exists, covered in reverb which is acting like a blanket - very warm, very comfortable, but ultimately something you're going to fall asleep in. The songs on Smokey Rolls...act like the dreams that you have whilst wrapped inside the blanket that 'Cristobal' puts around you right from the off.
As such, it's difficult to really concentrate on any of it. You'll remember flashes, snippets of detail, fragments of songs, the overall feeling of contentment that could at any point slip in to terror, rather than many whole tracks themselves. 'So Long Old Bean', with its gently skipping melody akin to that of a barbershop quartet, is one of the few you'll be able to pinpoint when you awake from your Banhart-induced slumber.
This haze (so important is it to the sound of the record that it shall now be referred to as The Haze, if that's cool wit'u) is indeed the defining characteristic of Banhart's records - and if his performance this Tuesday at the Forum was anything to go by, his live sets also - at the moment. But whilst it's certainly distinctive, it sometimes acts to his detriment. Whilst he's often dismissed as a hippy copyist, Devendra Banhart is actually really rather a wide eyed character, taking influence from all over the place. The unsurprisingly samba-influenced 'Samba Vexillographica' is a case in point. But because The Haze takes centre stage at all times, not the songs, even when he's trying to slip away from the bizarrofolk sound he's most renowned for, the songs still end up weighed down by this mist of reverb. It makes songs that should showcase his diverse influences actually just sound, albeit pleasantly enough, just like all the others.
Sometimes he's influenced so heavily by something it touches on pastiche, which would be a problem if he wasn't so clued up about the worlds he looks to as his sources of inspiration. 'Seahorse' is by a country mile the greatest track here, despite being the place at which he indulges in most depth his Eagles / Doors obsessions. It works in virtue of the fact that it's a proper song with a cracking riff that doesn't sound like his others. Granted, it sounds like other Doors songs, but that's precisely the point. Brilliant.
'Tondo Yanomaninista' continues where 'Seahorse' left off and has his band, Spiritual Bonerz (I never want to type that name again), sounding energised by the music for once instead of under the same trance as the listener will find themselves. It's easy to be wooed by Devendra Banhart when he's playing slow, subtle numbers, but it's difficult to be particularly agitated by it - 'Tondo Yanomaninista' is one of the few exceptions on Smokey...and it's because he's thought long and hard about it, rather than just rode blindly on with an idea.
Once, however, his genre dabbling works - 'Saved' is as fine an example of quirk-gospel as you're likely to hear this year. Perhaps it's the only one. Perhaps he's the only purveyor of that genre wot I did just make up. In which case, the man's a pioneer. Praise him, in a similar fashion to how he's praising whatever it is he's praising on this church worthy rabble rouser. A leprechaun, or sprite, or gazelle, or dung beetle, or something, probably.
The Haze is only ever lifted once, for the smile prompting, T-Rex aping single 'Lover', simply because things with that much fog on them don't get let on the radio. And for good reason - you don't want people falling asleep during drive time. It'd be carnage, and it'd be Devendra's fault. He doesn't want that. Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon isn't an attempt to assassinate his audience in their sleep behind the wheels of their own automobiles. It just isn't.
Oddly, radio hit 'Lover' comes 11 tracks in to an overly lengthy 16 track, 83 hour long album, when the respite would have suited the flow much better a few tunes earlier. And it doesn't herald a new dawn of breezy, tinny Devendra either - we're straight back in with The Haze once 'Carmencita' arrives, and even though it sounds a little out of place after the brashness of 'Lover', come the turn of 'The Other Woman', everything's back to normal. You can feel your eyelids getting heavy. The eyelids on your ears. He might be trying some vague reggae moves on your ass, but that Haze again means that the genre jump matters not one bit, and it sounds just the same. Really - rock, samba, folk, reggae, all sounding the same. Perhaps that's more of an achievement than I'm giving him credit for.
It's just that too many tracks have large sections that simply drift by. Sometimes they do it in their entirety - 'Seaside' for example could have its existence justified if it were as gentle, say, as waves lapping against your toes, but it's even gentler than that, to the extent that it might as well not exist, given that it adds next to nothing to the record whatsoever except more sodding reverb. But that's the point of its existence. 'Rose', similarly, just adds to the magnitude of The Haze rather than the quality of it, and it's the same for every bit of 'Bad Girl' where they're not wailing 'waaa waaa waa' at the tops of their voices. Those bits are actually quite fun. Join in!
Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon ends much as it begins, much as it has carried on, much as you'd expect - with a trio of sombre, sweet tunes - 'Freely' being the lightest, 'Remember' the most mournful and 'My Dearest Friend' barely warranting anything said about it at all. That can't be said of 'Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon' as a whole, however - there's much debate to be had on issue such as its true artistic worth, the strength of the actual songs here, or whether Devendra Banhart should just pay a little bit more attention to channelling his own genius down from his brain, out from his fingers and on to his guitar next time, rather than letting what will always happen when Devendra Banhart picks up a guitar just happen, and presenting it to the public.
Stream two tracks from 'Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon' HERE.
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