Devendra Banhart - Oh Me Oh My... The Way the Day Goes By the Sun is Setting Dogs are Dreaming Lovesongs of the Christmas Spirit
(Young God)
Dusting off my copy of Oh Me Oh My and sliding in the CD player, I felt as though I had discovered a long lost blues recording from the years long before my grandmother learned to suck eggs. From the opening notes, Devendra Banhart's newest effort sounded muffled and scratched, like something pulled from a musical archaeological site, a record that might make grandpa a little sentimental for the dusty thirties. It caught me a little off guard, but after initially being intrigued, I soon became a little doubtful. Oh Me Oh My is a little treasure, but one that you will likely spend before you have time to enjoy it.
Oh Me Oh My is a record full of contradictions. Somehow, it manages to be both overwhelming and a little bit inconsequential. It is crammed with ideas and songs (the lyric sheet is just shy of a short story) but runs out of steam quite quickly. It is both original, but also so heavily steeped in musical tradition and cliché, as to negate any of its intended freshness. With a voice that is both his greatest gift and his crutch, Devendra Banhart's high-pitched wail takes its toll by the mid-point of the record.
To describe Devendra Banhart, as only lazy music critics can, would be to place him somewhere between contemporary troubadours like Smog and Daniel Johnston and older blues artists such as Robert Johnson. It's hard to say why Oh Me Oh My comes up short, but Banhart is neither as engaging as some of his colleagues nor as relevant as his obvious old school influences. Maybe he could take a cue from Van Dyke Park's classic Song Cycle, a record that played with the personality of its influences, be they ragtime or jazz, to create an entirely new whole. That Devendra Banhart is not concerned with making fashionable music, however, is to his credit. As he sings on 'Roots...' ,"and the wind with its blow/and your scream with its soul/I don't play no rock and roll". His convictions are strong and true and for this reason Oh Me Oh My deserves a decent mark. Just don't expect to find it on your hip grandkids playlist.
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