The New Cue #321 September 25: Devendra Banhart
"Even at 42, I still go ‘ah... I don’t have to go to school!'"
Good morning!
Another week, another edition of The New Cue, another intro to muddle through before we get to the good stuff. 321 intros is a lot, you know. 321! Maybe we should start getting the artists to write the intros. Today we’ve got an interview with Devendra Banhart, who’s just released his excellent 11th record Flying Wig. I bet Devendra would write a good intro, it would be cosmic, it would be out there, you’d be thinking, ‘jeez, this guy is a hoot, I want to go fishing with him’ and then he would say ‘I don’t fish, but perhaps we could go rollerskating together’ and it would be the start of a beautiful friendship. That’s what we do at The New Cue, we bring people together. Anyway, go and read the interview now and forget about this paragraph, it didn’t happen.
Enjoy the edition,
Ted, Niall and Chris
Start The Week With… Devendra Banhart
On Friday, Devendra Banhart released his 11th studio album. Titled Flying Wig, it sees the American-Venezuelan singer-songwriter completely retool his sound, dispatching with the psychedelic-tinged folk and dusty, flamenco guitars that have dominated much of his work and into synth-y washes and 80s pop ambience. Produced by Welsh artist Cate Le Bon, it’s a hypnotic record. The transformation suits him. Last week, he hopped onto Zoom to tell Niall all about it.
Hello Devendra.
Hi Niall. What’s shaking?
It’s a windy, dreary evening on the Essex coast. What about you?
Yeah, a little bit of that, a little bit of Essex over here too.
I highly doubt that!
It’s a beautiful day in Essex in California, it’s overcast and gloomy. This is how I like it, it’s finally not scorching, there’s a freshness to the air. It’s 11am, I’m about to go to rehearsals but talk to Niall first.
I appreciate it. What time do you usually get up?
Well, I just got back from India so I’m really jet lagged. The perfect jetlag is you’re waking up earlier than you’d like to and feeling great. This one is almost too good, I wake up and I’m ready for dinner and bed and breakfast and so fucking out of it, waking up super awake at 2am The sweet spot is when you’re waking at six or seven.
Typically, I’m trying to wake up by 8am and then there’s a whole ritual thing I do. Sometimes even at this age at 42, I still go, ‘Ah... I don’t have to go to school, whoa, I’m just gonna just gonna stay in bed till 10!’, this adolescent thing takes over, like, ‘Fuck you school, I don’t have to go to school!’. It’s amazing that still happens.
Haha. When you walk into rehearsals today, what’s the vibe like? Do you guys get straight into it or is there a lot of chit-chat first?
Just pure business, no eye contact, everyone has their own little booth, we don’t even look at each other. No, it’s really like seeing my family without the burden, meaning this is my chosen family, I really actually like these people. My family I love and they’re my family, and then these people I love... but I also actually like. Everyone has their own bands and their own projects, and one of the people in the band lives in Cardiff, so we don’t get to see each other all the time so it feels like this beautiful reunion.
Inherently, we do reconnect with that little kid that is so excited to just be playing music and being on the road. Everyone in the band pretty much has a family now and so this is quite different from the world that they’re in and that contrast makes them appreciate the life that they have at home with their families but also actually makes being on tour even more fun because it’s just so different. Mine is a weird reversal, because I live alone and my big concern is if my fern is watered. When we’re not on tour, it’s a very different life than them and then on tour, they get to be a little bit freer, a little bit more like kids, and I actually take on more of this maternal role where I’m just making sure everyone’s okay. It’s much more responsibility in my life when I’m on tour.
Congratulations on the record. It’s been transporting me from the dreariness.
What?! It’s supposed to make you feel dreary! That was our goal. Our goal was to give you a dreary atmosphere!
No, dreary is too negative! I’d say it was more… what’s the word… soporific. That’s what it feels more like.
Oh! Well, that’s mighty kind of you. I’m kidding when I say I want it to be this dreary thing. OK, soporific. I’m not going to hear that word ever again so thank you for saying that one out loud. We did record it in this very beautiful natural California ideal environment that was just so unlike what the album actually sounds like, but I think hidden behind this shadowy, let’s say soporific world there is some actual sunshine. I wanted to make a Grateful Dead album and I knew that Cate Le Bon would be the perfect person to interpret my Grateful Dead desires into something that sounded totally dystopian and ended up being the sound of being fired but secretly going, ‘Fuck yes. I’m so happy!’.
You’ve been friends with Cate Le Bon for a while, how was the relationship different being friends to her being producer?
Well, when she’s my friend, the most beautiful thing I can say to her is ‘I love you’. And when she’s my producer, the most beautiful thing I can say to her is ‘I trust you’. We were supposed to co-produce this album but five minutes into the first session, I saw how together she was, how clear she was about what needed to happen and how disciplined and how gracefully she began to lay out how to get as close to what was in my mind as possible, obviously with her own ideas as well. It took me aback, it was so beautiful to watch, it was so elegant and it was such a relief. I immediately called my manager and said, ‘Cate’s producing, I’m just going to focus on writing, on the words and how to sing these words.’
When you got to the end of the record, how much did it align with what you had in your head at the start?
There were genuine moments where Cate would turn to me and I would be crying. There was one moment with a particular song where I was so clear about how it should go but also didn’t really even believe that we could get that close. And Cate looked at me and I was crying and she said, ‘Why are you crying?’ I said, ‘because it’s so close to what’s in my head.’ And that’s a really rare thing. And that did happen with quite a few of the tunes, so I was very, very happy with it. I mean, shit, I guess it comes out tomorrow, I better be happy with it.
Yeah, you should be. Has there been a record that’s the opposite of that, where you can still hear in your head what it should have sounded like?
Well, they’re all disappointing. Even this one is disappointing. I mean, I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, what a disaster!’, because that’s just the nature of it. When the record is done, all you want to do is the opposite. I’m like, ‘Oh, can I just do an unplugged bass album without any singing?’ I just want to hear the complete opposite. ‘Just flute, I just want to hear a flute, that’s it!’ Every record will always have that, that’s how you know it’s done, you’ve already explored this particular territory so much that all you’re longing for is a completely different territory to explore.
Who’s given you the best ever compliment about your music?
There’s a few. One of my heroes is this incredible writer and singer named Caetano Veloso and Caetano came to see us play a festival in Brazil. It’s Brazil, you know, South America, and so nothing works, everything goes on way too late. We’re still waiting to play and it’s 4am and we hear Caetano was there but we know that it’s 4am, so there’s no way that he’s still there. We’re kind of relieved because I’m so nervous to play in front of my hero. We play the show, total ramshackle of a disaster of a show, but it was at 4am and now it’s 5am and we’re done and we see Caetano walk backstage with his shirt open, it’s 5am and he goes ‘Guys, that was awful but I loved it!’.
That was the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me about our live show. A big moment for me was - it was 1000 years ago so but it’s still something that meant the world to me - because I got a call from Noel Gallagher. I grew up with Oasis, Oasis is very important to me. Noel called to ask me to remix a song and he was on his way to go see The Specials play. He’s like, ‘I’m on a train, I’m gonna go see The Specials play’ and that somehow fucked my brain up because I loved The Specials, I loved that British ska world, Madness, The Selecter, Bodysnatchers, The Specials, then later I was so into Oasis and there’s Noel telling me he’s gonna go to The Specials and do I want to remix a song, that fucked me up. That was one of the big complimentary highlights of my life for sure.
How did that call end?
He was like, ‘I’m sorry, wrong number, I thought you were Kenny Loggins’ and he hung up. No, I remixed this song called (Get Off Your) High Horse Lady. It’s a long, long time ago. I think maybe more lately a big compliment would be knowing that KD Lang knows I exist, that means a lot to me too because I just love KD Lang. And so that’s a big compliment. And now talking to you in Essex, nothing tops that!
Haha. OK, into the serious questions now. The new record is called Flying Wig. What’s the best wig you’ve ever seen?
Great question. Damn. I think the best avant-garde wig I’ve ever seen was a photograph of somebody with their balls and penis inside an empty Cheetos bag and the pubes are just sticking out. I thought, ‘Now that’s a wig, that’s a gorgeous avant-garde wig.’ That’s my answer for most best avant-garde wig. And then, what is the most beautiful wig, special wig? I like Ahsoka’s wig in the new Disney show. I think it’s supposed to be her flesh coming out of her head but by technicality, we’re gonna say that’s a nice wig.
What song would you play people from the new record to best sum up what your music sounds like in 2023?
There’s 12 songs on the record so I would get 12 speakers and I would press play on each track at the same time because that’s very modern, that’s how people ingest shit at this point. Why is it sports bars are the only ones? You go into sports bar at the airport and they have 50 TVs with every single fucking sports game. Why isn’t it that way with music? Instead of this one shitty song that’s super loud, give me 50 songs at a medium level of volume. That’s what I want to see. And also I propose this: speaking of Oasis, I’m begging Noel and Liam to curate a festival where a hundred bands play and they have microphones and they can talk over the entire set and just criticise it. It would be heaven.
Would you play?
That's the only condition because we wouldn't make it. We wouldn’t make it.
That’s perfect. I’ll let you go to rehearsal now.
Thanks. Have a beautiful night.
ND