Track Listing

1. Wake Up Little Sparrow
2. Ay Mama
3. We All Know
4. Little Yellow Spider
5. A Ribbon
6. At The Hop
7. My Ships
8. Noah
9. Sister
10. Water May Walk
11. Horseheadedfleshwizard
12. An Island
13. Be Kind
14. Owl Eyes
15. The Good Red Road
16. Electric Heart

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34514 in Music
• Released on: 2004-09-27
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Enhanced

Amazon.co.uk Review
More a companion piece than a fresh LP in its own right, Nino Rojo compiles the studio out-takes from Devendra Banhart's 'proper' 2004 album, Rejoicing in the Hands. But far from revealing this San Franciscan faerie-folk finger-picker as a talent stretching himself too thin, it offers some very real evidence that Banhart's muse is at the very least, eerily deep, and at the most, potentially bottomless. And really, why not? That high, quavering voice would sound good reciting a shopping list, and his guitar-playing – deft in complexity, fingers audibly scraping from fret to fret – seems to be limitless in its capacity to discover strange, creepy-pretty melodies. As before, Banhart doesn't always present his songs totally neat: "Ay Mama" gains a gentle power from quiet yawns of background brass, while "We All Know" and "Be Kind" are as close as he gets to full-band tracks, bolstered by slapped tambourines and reedy harmonica. The finest song here, though, is "Little Yellow Spider", a quaint nursery-rhyme with a barb in its tail: "Hey there little sexy pig, you made it with a man/ And now you've got a little kid with hooves instead of hands". Magic, as is the Banhart way. --Louis Pattison

CD Description
With NINO ROJO, San Francisco Bay Area neo-folkster Devendra Banhart brings forth a companion to his acclaimed REJOICING IN THE HANDS, released earlier in 2004. Sitting barefoot by the metaphorical campfire next to Beck, Tiny Tim, Karen Dalton, and Vincent Gallo, Banhart plays acoustic guitar and sings in a manner that's quirky, catchy, and a bit spooky. Here the tunes range from loopy ditties ("We All Know"), warbled mantras ("Ay Mama"), and half-crooned/half-whispered sing-alongs ("A Ribbon") to works that include a little help from his likeminded friends, including Vetiver's Andy Cabic ("At the Hop"). "Little Yellow Spider" comes off like a perverse Raffi record, as interpreted by Mississippi Fred McDowell.Later, Banhart channels the vocals of both Blind Willie McTell and Marc Bolan for "Noah," which includes whistling and a mournful piano. The enhanced CD presents a great, "psychedelicized" video of Devendra and friends jamming on "At the Hop," which will surely cause pleasant flashbacks for anyone who's ever spent a weekend in a woodsy cabin full of hippies.

Customer Reviews

Silly person [...]
[...] how to have fun, how to escape, remember childhood and visualise anything that is not REAL!!! This album is not, on the whole a collection of his best work but it still touches on genius and easily deserves 5 stars. If you haven't discovered Devendra's work yet i would recommend Cripple Crow as a first album, to get tuned into his sound, lyrics and mad world, as it's a little less querky sounding, then i'm sure you'll get quite addicted.

the most achingly beautiful depth scaling high soaring man
and this album shows him off at his best. if you want to go on a hippie neo jesus wizard world folk trip, you're in the right place.

a new twist on an old style
Devendra's second album of 2004 and very similar to 'Rejoicing in the Hands'. If you liked it buy this. If you haven't heard it think early Marc Bolan (the best and least irritating bits of the Tyrannosaurus Rex albums), guitar playing that reminds me of the ingenuousness of Marc, to number of more sophisticated, melodic players from Roy Harper,Nick Drake and Bert Jansch to Donovan, Dylan and sometimes Leonard's Cohen's accompaniments, but it doesn't sound old. He's somehow updated these sounds and made them his own. The lyrics are somewhat incomprehensible at times, very cute at others and tend to make you think he'd be cool to have a drink with. Don't know why it's so appealing, but it is.