Devendra Banhart is 'the real thing'... and I'm lovin' it!

[imomus]

Michael Gira on Devendra Banhart:

'Whether the songs are pained, twisted, whimsical, or even sometimes weirdly silly, aside from being fantastically musical and expertly played, they are also utterly sincere, and devoid of a single drop of post modern irony. In short, he's the real thing.'



'2 years ago,' Gira tells us on the XL Records site, 'I first heard the crude home made recordings of Devendra Banhart... His voice - a quivering high-tension wire, sounded like it could have been recorded 70 years ago - these songs could have been sitting in someone's attic, left there since the 1930's... When it came time to record new music we were of course faced with the quandary of how to go about it - does he continue making hiss-saturated home recordings, or do we go into a "professional" studio? We mutually decided that it was best to move on - why should he be ghetto-ized as a possible low-fi crank/eccentric? Besides, his songwriting and his guitar playing (in my opinion) have taken such leaps and bounds forward, that we were compelled to record them in a way that made it possible to really hear the performances clearly... we recorded 32 songs (culled from something like 57 Devendra had initially submitted!) in his living room, using the best possible vintage gear. Ideal... Deciding on the final arrangements was ridiculously easy - the songs were so good in their raw state that there was no need to bolster them with sonic fluff or cheap impact.'

You know, there are so many weird assumptions and contradictions in that text! I like Devendra's records, but he by no means escapes the post-modern irony Gira claims he does. A recording made now that sounds like a 1930s recording is an example of post-modern irony, whether that's deliberate or accidental. Gira's desire to avoid the pomo label just pushes Devendra into the Oasis school of (accidental) pomo irony rather than the Matmos (deliberate) school of irony. (Visually, Devendra's retro-hippy look is also completely post-modern. Also, check out the incredibly camp, post-modern and ironic atmosphere that prevails on Devendra's tours. Especially the hilarious video spoofs featuring Captain Krizzle.)

Good grief, where to begin with Gira? The idea of 'fantastically musical' is just silly when applied to an artifact that appears in the category of music. It's like saying that one cultural artifact is more 'cultural' than another cultural artifact. I also have major problems with 'expertly played'. So this means that Devendra is getting closer and closer to the day a crack session musician could take over the guitar chores? As for 'recording in a way that made it possible to really hear the performances clearly', I find it completely odd that the best way to do this was to 'use the best possible vintage gear'. Are we Lenny Kravitz? Do we believe that pop's Platonic ideal is the exact sound of 1968? And as for 'the songs were so good in their raw state that there was no need to bolster them with sonic fluff...' Is there really sound here and sonic fluff there? Are they distinguishable? One is serious, and the other is fluff, right? One is essential, the other inessential, right? One is signal, the other noise? One is figure, the other ground. In short, if you find a barrel containing both music and sonic fluff, hunt through the sonic fluff for the music, because sonic fluff is just fluff but music is the real thing. So off with the hiss! (And if you're Devendra's stylist, remember that his head is the important thing and his hair is just fluff.)

What Gira describes seems either naive or willfully perverse. It's Platonic and entirely yoked to 'the metaphysics of presence'. In this vision, there is the 'real' and 'clear' sound of 'well-played' music which 'production' can only tarnish. The hiss on Devendra's early recordings is merely an impairment, to be banished when the budget allows. To retain it would make him a 'lo-fi eccentric'. Devendra Banhart, eccentric? Heaven forbid!

So, let me get this straight. The best way to get a 'real' and 'clear' sound is to use vintage gear, right? That means stuff like tape hiss, wow and flutter, right? But not quite as much of it as Devendra used to use, because you're trying to get away from 'eccentricity' and the 'lo-fi ghetto', right? But tracking down and using vintage gear (only 'the best', mind, not 'the worst' -- we want only the best quality errors, not cheap glitch and fluff) is not considered 'production', somehow, just as it wasn't 'production' when Devendra made those early hissy recordings that evoked the 1930s so pleasurably for Gira. None of this is 'production' because production is bad. Production is a stumbling block in the clear, natural, unproblematical path between the artist and the listener. (Do I have to add 'Protestant' somewhere in that sentence?) Production is something calculating, something that takes us away from authenticity and 'the natural', isn't it? And neither hippies nor retro-hippies like to lose touch with nature, do they? In the end, production itself is dangerously post-modern. After all, what is a rack of sound effects units but a series of quotations of all the other records which use the same sound effects? But, whoops, what is vintage analog gear but a quote of the records made with vintage analog gear? There is no way to produce an un-produced record. There is no neutral way of recording. The fourth wall and the live recording are conventions we go along with because we love theatre. There's just no escaping post-modernism, quotation, and irony. It's there at the front door and it's there at the back door. Dress up nicely and step over your porch to greet your friend post-modernism with a wave on the street, or flee out back and end up at his feet in a pile of his junk and rubbish, it's all pretty much the same thing in the end. Except that it's always friendlier to wave rather than sneer, and nicer to affirm the inevitable than deny it.

So, dear Michael Gira, here is the news. It's 2004. Reproducing, deliberately and self-consciously, the sound of the past is an absolutely key part of post-modern music-making. I do it, you do it, Devendra Banhart does it. When you deny there's anything post-modern or ironic about Devendra Banhart's records, it's terribly post-modern and terribly ironic!

Comments

[klasensjo.livejournal.com]

The music and style of Devendra Banhart and his sister Joanna Newsom make me feel very uneasy. Unfortunately they're also very real and not just cartoons. I prefer Jandek.

[fortglacial.livejournal.com]

joanna's music is hard for me to take in large amounts. she sounds like a granny on acid. But, nevertheless I still think it's interesting.