Authenticity is such a bore. Where is the real Devendra Banhart? On his fifth album, he’s Elvis Presley one minute, Iggy Pop the next, and Caetano Veloso most of the time. Often, it’s not even clear if that’s still him on lead vocals during the doo-wop and Nuyorican-soul excursions. Banhart likes playing dress-up and doesn’t care if you like it or not. Witness the reaction when he emerged from two near-perfect fingerpicked, flamenco-tinged folk albums as a self-described “White Reggae Troll” whose touring band stunk too much of patchouli for most horrified hipsters. His last full-length, 2005’s sprawling Cripple Crow, was a schizoid, cringe-worthy mess of the good, the bad and the goofy. He’s no less of a ham on Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, but this time, it’s actually funny, never more so than on “Shabop Shalom,” on which he rhymes “foul mood” with “Talmud” and asks, “Who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?” The ’70s boogie of “Lover” and gospel of “Saved” are equally joyous and ridiculous. In between, Banhart still spins the type of delicate, fragile folk that captivated us in the first place, though now he’s more likely to layer psychedelic atmospherics or link it to Tropicalia. Even Banhart’s reggae tendencies are re-deemed on the haunting, minimally percussive “The Other Woman.” The more he pushes these various personas, the less sense we expect him to make and the more rewarding he becomes. “I’m scared of ever being born again/In this form again,” Banhart sings, but what form he’s referring to is anyone’s guess. It doesn’t sound like he’s scared of anything at all. [www.xlrecordings.com]
—Michael Barclay
