A conversation about learning to love the inner conflict, Cate Le Bon and the essence of notebooks.
“My life has always been dominated by a low-level peripheral sadness. It feels like sadness has completely permeated me since I was born. For better or for worse, I had to learn to dance with her.” Devendra Banhart says sentences that have the effect of a massive collision of a knee and a chair. He phrases it devastatingly and his coffee-warm voice still sounds full-bodied cheerfulness. The 42-year-old Texan with Venezuelan roots is the type of guy who would have to take on the group leader role in the apocalypse scenario.
After all, he is aware of the many grievances in society and has nevertheless opted for “a fairly sentimental” view of things, which gives everything a beautifully retro color. A quality that he himself often found questionable, but which he now looks at positively: “I am proud that I have managed to redefine this quality for myself. For a long time I was very sentimental when it came to things. I didn’t want to throw anything away because it seemed to give me stability. I have now turned my sentimentality away from pure objects and appreciate an empty house. It’s not really empty, it’s full of potential,” he explains, while constant singing bowl sounds fill the background on his side of the Zoom call.
“Cate Le Bon is the master of space”
To properly clean up, he asked Cate Le Bon to help with his eleventh album, FLYING WIG. As a fan of her work, Devendra Banhart still had to bring herself to ask the Welshwoman. “Cate is the better songwriter, singer, poet and producer and that’s why I had to have a lot of courage to face her in the work,” he says, exaggeratedly modest, because half measures are not the style of the musician with many genres -Flirts.
According to press storytelling, Cate Le Bon is said to have once cut his hair and, at the very latest, the two of them had a strong vibe over self-made tattoos. The friendship grew into song-level communication. Just when Banhart felt particularly helpless and wordless and threatened to drift into complete introspection, she gave him new options. One of them was a midnight blue gala dress as an outlet for what he didn’t know how to classify until then. Now the dress in question is part of the cover artwork and Banhart’s current photo series. According to his narrative, with the impressive piece of material he could also get closer to his feminine side and get out of the stagnating, inner conflicts. But that’s not all: “Cate Le Bon has managed to make my songs no longer too burdensome. She is the master of the room.”
Giving freedom as a thought multiplier
After initial difficulty finding words, song, melody and sound ideas popped up in all directions thanks to the Le Bon collaboration. “I had notebooks upon notebooks ready,” which he wanted to squeeze all into just one album, the follow-up to 2019’s MA. Cate Le Bon’s answer worked fabulously for the artist with a penchant for metaphor as a walking aid.
“She said, ‘Let’s try to find the stone that sings in your idea.’ She layered and distilled.” That would be exactly her art. Banhart was only too happy to get involved and created a psychedelic dark pop work that stands out in his oeuvre published since 2002. Because it really makes him sound like Devendra Banhart in a parallel universe. Because it is so dark that the sadness can no longer be ignored.
Le Bon would also have revealed the negative thoughts with her way of working. Giving space as a thought multiplier, whether you like it or not. “But I have the feeling that we humans are always trying to fill time. As if time only exists to be filled. And if you try anything other than this filling, it seems like the hardest thing in the world. Like meditating. Sitting without a cell phone often leaves you with self-doubt. A flood of negative thoughts hits you and you feel uncomfortable. Because it seems as if when you tried to meditate you invited an orchestra of self-hatred to start rehearsing at that moment,” he says – and by this he also means his writing process.
Dystopian city versus hippie nature spot
Even when he was in Kathmandu, thoughts of this kind were forming in the silence, but he didn’t yet know how to put them into songs. Banhart then began writing in Nepal and continued in the Himalayas. A wide variety of places had already shaped his artistic work – Caracas, where he grew up with his mother until he was 14 years old, later Los Angeles, then his time studying in San Francisco, life in Paris and then again moving between San Francisco and Los Angeles, without a permanent address. Restless and inspired, this is the man who creates his songs like an album-length river that seems anything but wildly mixed, even if Banhart constantly speaks of inner chaos.
This time a majority of the record was recorded in California. Something that has to be said because it is not superficially audible in the ten pieces. A comment that makes the cheerfulness in Banhart’s voice even more saturated. He confirms: “No song feels like day. The album is more of a dystopian city. Cate and I had to laugh a lot because we were recording the record in this hippie nature spot – there were all these beautiful animals, birds and rabbits to see everywhere, and we were in Neil Young’s old house doing something completely different with external influences. Darkness was an important part of this process and at the same time we also wanted to convey hope.”
“For me the album is like crying in a whirlpool”
Devendra Banhart values duality. His work is strongly influenced by this. “For me, the album is like crying in a hot tub – you feel like crying, but at least it makes you feel good physically,” he says, and you can practically hear his smile getting so wide that his teeth are teething come to light. Even though his lyrics focus on bitterness, fears and longings, he is also in the mood for celebration. “I can buy anything, drive anywhere, distract myself, but the sadness and the duality will remain. But do you know what remains? The opportunity to express myself through my art – and I have to celebrate that, right?”
For him it is also a celebration that he met Cate Le Bon. That it gave him a new sense of tidiness. And he even had the courage to destroy old notebooks. No, even worse: burning them. “I got into the habit of storing notebooks in the cupboards where you actually keep pots, dishes or supplies. This kitchen area became my archive with thousands of journals, ideas and notes, simply because I’m not a good cook anyway. And now I have burned this archive. I built a big fire every evening for over two weeks. That freed me.”