Devendra Banhart is a bit of a legend, so it’s quite a coup that Melting Vinyl have managed to secure this concert in Kemptown’s gorgeous St George’s Church. It’s his only UK gig this year other than the Green Man Festival, so we guess this Brighton gig is a bit of a warm-up.
If you don’t know Venezuelan-American freak-folk artist Banhart, he’s well known for an original oeuvre that combines meditative folk with toe-tapping world rhythms in a style that gets feet-tapping and faces smiling. It is a style entirely his own.
More than ten albums into a 20-plus year career, he continues to surprise. Last year’s album ‘Flying Wig’ was a collaboration with labelmate Cate Le Bon, who produced the synth-driven recording. The album combines brooding numbers like ‘Fireflies’ and ‘Twin’ with lighter upbeat tunes like ‘Nun’ that hide a deceptively darker interior:
“I bought my ticket at the nunnery shop
Dead like a rat at the edge of my heart
I couldn’t get down but I couldn’t get up
Couldn’t get running…”
Banhart describes the whole album as being “about transmuting despair into gratitude, wounds into forgiveness, and grief into praise” – the product of a ritualistic creative practice culminating in a record that “sounds like getting a very melancholic massage, or weeping, but in a really nice outfit.”
It sounds like he is still traversing a path between contemplation and joy. We have little doubt a Banhart gig will be a memorable one.
Devendra Banhart plays St George’s Church, Brighton on Thursday 15th August 2024
Tickets are available from Melting Vinyl here
