Devendra Banhart

Devendra Banhart

Devendra Banhart’s Flying Wig, is a landscape of recurrent dualities; a can of paradoxes, a box of worms. What goes up, must come down, eventually. Battle-scarred by life and loss, Banhart found himself despondent, folded inwards; finding it difficult to speak, let alone sing. “It’s about transmuting despair into gratitude, wounds into forgiveness, grief into praise” ruminates Banhart on his eleventh studio album. Gliding through the air, the whisper of two buoyant words symbolically and at times, literally appear — “and yet…” (inspired by ‘A World of Dew’ by 19th century Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa) — coloring in the melancholic outlines and replacing them with a bonded optimism. “The ‘and yet, and yet,’” Banhart explains, “is our ability to face despair with hope, to keep on failing and loving. My whole life has been filled with sadness. Everything I do in life is to help cope with that sadness.“

Support: John Moods