American singer-songwriter Devendra Banhart was born in 1981, but sounds more like a singer who was whipped up by Alan Lomax in a forgotten village in the American countryside sometime in the 1930s. Banhart sings his lo-fi folk songs with a vibrato that gives his voice a very special sound and accompanies himself with fingerpicking guitar playing, stripped of any production frills. His idiosyncratic
… (or peculiar) style was first heard on the 2002 CD Oh Me Oh My, with songs recorded on a rickety four-track recorder. After Banhart's second album Rejoicing In The Hands was released in 2004, Niño Rojo is released in the same year. The songs for both CDs were recorded during one session and the CDs are completely equivalent to each other. Nevertheless, a difference can be heard, because on Niño Rojo Banhart has chosen to provide some of his songs with more than just a guitar, and there are also some careful wind instruments, electric guitars or keyboards. That doesn't mean that the original approach has been lost, because Niño Rojo still sounds just as authentic. (IV)more
