If David Byrne had started his love of all things Latino/Brazilian/Cuban as an acoustic-guitar-slinging hippie-ish Venezuelan kid in Rhode Island with a yen for kitchen-magnet poetry and slippery crooning, he would’ve wound up more like Devendra Banhart than he did Malcolm Gladwell with a beat box and a baggy white suit. Now nine swaying, creaking albums and 14 years into his cruise-control career, Banhart hasn’t changed his tiny fever dream aesthetic much(o), which is fine.
The fantasy and the fantastic continue, and his soft sculptural Dadaist lyrical sense of romance will always go with DevBan’s trembling, lilting melodies like cheese and chocolate. “Middle Names” is so soft in its whistling de-tuned synth, shimmering plucked guitars and wobbly voice, a vocal-melody style that continues on Ape In Pink Marble into everything from Magritte-like character etchings (“Theme For A Taiwanese Woman In Lime Green”), gentle comedies (“Fancy Man”) and the simply silly (“Fig In Leather”). Good on Dev.
—A.D. Amorosi
