His Freak-Folk Flag Flies: Devendra Banhart

His Freak-Folk Flag Flies: Devendra Banhart

Sweet, shocking, mesmerizing -- Devendra Banhart follows his sprawling, childlike musical muse: Aidin Vaziri | Wearing tight-fitting, flared jeans, brown boots and hoop earrings that make him look part hippie, part pirate, the songwriter leans back on a bed and tries to describe "Cripple Crow." "It's like a many-ribboned thing," he says. "It's like a ribboned octopus. Not even an octopus." The album, his fourth, is indeed something -- full of the vivid melodies and otherworldliness that have made him the unofficial leader of the freak-folk scene, alongside the likes of Joanna Newsom and Sufjan Stevens. There are psychedelic pop pastiches ("Lazy Butterfly"), lilting ballads ("Santa Maria Da Feira"), even a secret faux reggae MP3 for computer users. Mostly there are songs about children. Strange songs about children, such as "Long Haired Child," "Chinese Children" and "I Feel Just Like a Child." And perhaps strangest of all, "Little Boys," a bluesy romp with a lyrical kicker in Banhart's typically quavery voice: "I see so many little boys I want to marry, I see plenty little kids I've yet to have." If the line feels out of place on an otherwise eccentric but earnest album, that may be the point. "I was with this guy from the band Bunny Brains and he was saying, 'I heard your record, man, it's gonna be in, like, Starbucks, whatever.' And I was like, man, I don't want it to be in Starbucks! I'm going to write a song that will guarantee that it is not in Starbucks." At least that's how he rationalized it in earlier interviews. Today, Banhart has another account. "I knew four hermaphrodites in Caracas," he begins, maybe not really helping matters. "I was thinking about them and I wanted to write a song from the perspective of all four of them combined. So it's a song about a schizophrenic hermaphrodite."