"There were two 'Reigns of Terror', if we could but remember and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passions, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon a thousand persons, the other upon a hundred million; but our shudders are all for the horrors of the... momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief terror that we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror - that unspeakable bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves."

Mark Twain, writing about the French Revolution,
in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

R.I.P. Devendra Banhart's Balls

Just got through listening to Devendra Banhart's new shitshow, What Will We Be. I feel like I could probably stop right there and you'd get the picture, because that is a bad title. But imma keep going anyways. This is a toothless, boring, predictable record. Two of those descriptions typically work for any Banhart release, but toothless he was usually not. I mean, this is a guy who wrote a song about wanting to marry little boys for fuck's sake! Pair that with insane parables featuring anthropomorphized animals and you've got at least something to work with. Also, his music, while a little bland, was not bad folk music. And folk music is a respectable genre! Finally, dude used to be so much fun to LOL at. See what I mean:

Observing someone so determined to get weird with every possible situation was fun. But alas, it seems Devendra got a little jealous of all the cash that snooze-rock artists such as Grizzly Bear and Fleet Foxes were banking and decided to take down the freak flag and start puttin' motherfuckers to sleep as well. Step one: Start dressing like a hipster.

Step two: Make a boring album that takes no effort whatsoever to listen to. Check and check. He's not even writing folk music anymore. I mean, I'm certainly not against artists branching out from their comfort zones and experimenting with their creative capabilities. I swear I'm not. But for a guy who's been pretty successful at making stark, super weird folk music to all of a sudden cut a vaguely folk-tinged surf-rock record in which he abandons the vocal approach that is the sole reason he is on any sort of musical map in favor of the laziest and most obvious harmonies to cash in on the current trends? That's just too much shit to reasonably expect me to eat without puking it all out all over your face, sir. So it is with this in mind that I am pronouncing the death of Devendra Banhart's balls.

R.I.P.