LIKE some kind of latter day Pied Piper, Devendra Banhart has never shrunk from leading the (flower) children onto the hillside of incredible dreams and his fifth album finds him as comfortable as ever in that role.
But you don't need to scratch the surface too hard to find heartbreak behind most of these songs as he exorcises lost love in a series of unlikely - sometimes downright silly - scenarios.
Somehow Banhart and his magic band manage to conjure the listess spirits of Marc Bolan, Fleetwood Mac, Captain Beefheart, the Soul Stirrers, Jim Morrison, Donovan, the Bonzos and even Bobby Darin. It's defiantly a band record as well with the assembled touring musicians pushing the songs through time and key changes that would be lost in the child-like environs of Banhart's folky homelands.
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