It’s been over two decades since Devendra Banhart sauntered barefoot into our lives, cramming dozens of sharp, cryptically beautiful songs onto head-spinning albums, performing career CPR on long-neglected folk artists (Vashti Bunyan, Linda Perhacs), giddily mining every musical genre for off-kilter experiments and crystalizing a whole movement around idiosyncratic folk music now known as New Weird Americana. Now, even with a pandemic behind him, he views the world with characteristic open-hearted optimism, finding a spiritual connected-ness in a global disaster, the DIY spirit in the ruins of his native Venezuela.
Recently we caught up with Banhart to discuss his 11th album, Flying Wig, his artistic partnership with Cate Le Bon, his 20-year-delayed concert in Caracas, and the music that, now as ever, he is bubbling over with enthusiasm for. We also explore “Charger” perhaps the most Devendra Banhart song ever, which starts out wide-eyed to the point of parody about the most mundane of things, then touches profundity as the lens widens to cosmic revelation. | j kelly
Aquarium Drunkard: I’m really loving your new album. It’s got these wonderful ambient atmospheres. I was thinking about your album from last year with Noah Georgeson and wondering if the sound partly evolved out of that?
Devendra Banhart: Well, there might have been a bit of counterpoint, in that, after every album, you want to rethink everything and do something new. Accidents are going to happen. But something that I think everyone consciously does.
That record was so organic, and I think we were really proud that the synths felt like a part of the strings and woodwinds, these organic instruments. There’s a synth on almost every song on that record. But we wanted it to be so subtle and integrated with that organic feeling.
So I think that subconsciously, there might have been some counterpart to that record. This record has a lot of acoustic instruments, but the substrate is predominantly synthy and electronic, which, at the same time, we were trying to make as organic as possible. Or to feel as elemental as possible. I wanted to make a Grateful Dead record.
AD: But why would you want to do that? There are so many Grateful Dead records.
Devendra Banhart: Haha, that’s right. It’s enough.
AD: You worked with Cate Le Bon on this record, and I think of her as hyper rhythmic and abstract. How did you meet her and what was she able to do for you that you might not otherwise have been able to do?
Devendra Banhart: It’s a big question. There are lot of questions in that question.
AD: I know. You can ignore some of them if you like.
Devendra Banhart: Don’t tell me that! I’ve known Cate for many years. Even before we met, I felt…this is an insult to Cate, but I felt such an aesthetic affinity to Cate. Even the first album (Oh Me Oh My) had a similar title as one of my records. Her songwriting was so good. The poetry was so good. Such a good songwriter, and then you realize, oh, wow, this person is an incredible singer as well. This person is an incredible guitar player as well. An incredible bass player as well. This person is an incredible producer, an incredible piano player. So that was really intimidating, and of course, I could have run off and gone, ah, this person…what’s the point?
My options were this. Quit everything once I saw Cate play and saw how good she was. Quit everything. Or ask them to produce my record. You know? It’s really funny to work with someone who’s better at everything that I’ve been doing my whole life. It’s amazing.
When Cate produced Tim Presley’s solo record. I remember visiting them, and Tim was like if you get the chance, ask Cate to produce the record. She sees the song. It’s a different way.
That stayed with me. I’d been producing my own records for a long time, almost exclusively, and during the pandemic, we made this ambient record. We started writing songs. Noah and I and Gyan Riley just finished a record of our own songs. So I think Noah and I are more in that collaborative place, as two musicians hanging, as opposed to him as a producer and me as a songwriter kind of roles. So it just made sense. I wanted to work with somebody else.
The plan was to co-produce, but in one minute…well realistically within ten minutes of starting the first day of recording that changed. We had signed a contract that we were co-producing it. Of course we were co-producing it. I’ve always co-produced. Except for the last record, where I just said, no, you do everything. But ten minutes into the studio session, Cate is so prepared and has this incredible sense of where the song will go and is directing it so efficiently. I just immediately called my manager and said, “Cate’s producing. I’m just going to focus on writing.” And that’s it. It’s really special.
AD: How did it work between the two of you. Did you bring stuff in that was demo’d?
Devendra Banhart: I had a bunch of demos and I sent them to Cate. What do you think? What sounds exciting to you? What do you want to work on here? Because I have favorites but I’m not objective at all. I think this is a good song because it’s a chord I’ve never used. Or I think this is a good song because I sing “banana” and I never said banana before. None of the reasons why I think it’s good are why it’s good. Or makes it good at all.
In the past, at one point, I’ve brought in too, too much. And Noah, bless his soul, had to deal with a lot when I was in my early 20s. Just arrogance and madness.
AD: But the work was magic, so you’re excused.
Devendra Banhart: I’d give him like 90 demos. So anyways here, say I send Cate 24 demos. I’ll know that maybe four are going to be something. But the rest, it’s a collaborative thing and I know I’m not objective at all. So I sent Cate that stuff. She took her time, which I really appreciated. A part of you wants the person to get right back to you immediately with notes and everything. But I know what Cate did, which was wait until there was a moment to give it the attention it deserves. She got back to me with her picks and her favorites, and then I could focus on those a little bit more.
When the day came to start recording, they all had missing pieces, but the main structure and the bones, the main ideas were there. Those missing pieces aren’t left open. They’re just not going to emerge until you’re fully giving all your attention to the song in the studio. That’s how it works for me. Now and then, there’s something that’s all there, but rarely. You come in and there are always a few little missing things that emerge when you’re recording in this concentrated way, this strange, outside of time kind of way.
One of the reasons why you leave those holes is because the space does change the work. The environment that you’re in does change that piece. And so, it’s almost like, no matter what, something new is going to emerge when you move to a new place to start working on a song that you mostly wrote somewhere totally different. It’s an interesting things.
AD: Were there songs that really changed because of what she did with them?
Devendra Banhart: 100%. Most of the songs were acoustic guitar or electric guitar. That’s it.
AD: Tell me a story about one of them that started out this way and ended up in a completely different place.
Devendra Banhart: Oh “Twin” would be a good example.
AD: That’s the one that’s so disco, right?
Devendra Banhart: It certainly wasn’t on the demo. The demo is a big guitar thing, not even electric. It was acoustic guitar. I wanted it to be like jam, super mellow. I wanted it to feel like 1960s sunshine, California. Amazing how that totally evolved and changed. Cate saw something that was on the other end of the spectrum. And I was so into it. Let’s go on this adventure. That’s the whole point. We really turned a lot of those songs around. I guess that’s not much of a story. Let me think of an example. Everything on the record, very few things sound like the demo.
AD: It’s interesting, though, because none of it sounds very much like Cate’s own music. She was able to put her stamp on it without making it sound like her.
Devendra Banhart: Absolutely. To me, it sounds very much like both of us combined. To me, the example of that is…my favorite song on the record is a song called “Charger,” and it means the most to me.
AD: Can you explain what that song means to you, because it’s kind of a simple lyric about a pretty pedestrian thing. Losing your charger, not being able to charge your phone.
Devendra Banhart: Yeah, exactly, and why it means so much to me is that it starts off with that beyond mundane, simple thing, which I love, “I lost my charger.” And then it feels like the dumb joke here is that the charger is a metaphor for your will to live, let’s say. And there’s a panic, but then there’s something so colloquial about “I lost my charger” and the real panic that that creates. I thought that’s an interesting thing to think about. It’s such a mundane, banal but modern thing. The real anxiety about losing it. Any time I play it live, which has only been a few times now, people laugh at that the first time.
But why that song means so much to me is I feel like it moves into something more like an honest and genuine expression of hope, towards the end. It starts to take on a different feel. I was so surprised by that.
I had this line. “Everything is burning down,” and that’s the line that’s got to be in there. “Everything is burning down.” This is in my head, and we’re still tracking the song and figuring it out. Cate is not thinking about this song, but she just mentions, when we’re taking a break, “You know, grass is always green.” That’s a line that she’s had floating around. “Grass is always green.” And I jumped up and screamed. I had this “ahh, oh my god, that’s the line. Can we please use that?” “Everything is burning down, but the grass is always green. Cate!” And she was like, “yeah, yeah, sure.” And it was the perfect line. That sentiment is half mine and half Cate’s. It’s what makes that song so much to me. So I sing that line with such a beautiful feeling to know that this is a real collab and I think that’s kind of indicative of the whole record.
It’s not a Cate Le Bon record, and it doesn’t necessarily sound like her. I would never have made a record that sounded just like Cate.
AD: I understand you made it in house that Neil Young had lived?
Devendra Banhart: The house where Neil wrote the demos to After the Goldrush.
AD: Did you feel any Neil Young-like presence?
Devendra Banhart: He never moved out. He was there the whole time. Wake up Neil. It’s time to record!
What was a trip was that ten years ago, maybe even more, something like a decade ago, we made a recorded called Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon in Topanga, and our manager, who has since passed away, I shared a manager with Neil, Elliot Roberts. He was my manager and Neil’s manager.
Elliot came over and visited us while we were recording at this house in Topanga. The whole band was there. It was actually like six people. And Elliott goes, “You see that house right there?” He pointed at it. He said, “That’s where Neil recorded After the Goldrush.” And now, to find ourselves in that house…I could see the house that we were in that Elliott had pointed from. That was a real trip.
If you could feel any vibe, it’s the vibe of that area, like Dylan, the southern California dream template. But also it kept us focused on counterpoint, in that we were in this idyllic natural setting, really, really bucolic, really full of wildlife and a super healthy environment and so sunny and it kept us very clear that we wanted to create a shadow side of that, intentionally. So the music felt more like a desolate landscape, a desert landscape, a dystopian landscape even. Like imagine Blade Runner, but it’s just some person that lives in that city. Just goes to their therapist and has a shitty job.
AD: The accountant in Blade Runner.
Devendra Banhart: In their little cubicle doing their job.
AD: I really like the title track. It’s got some really beautiful guitar. Sounds like pedal steel. I was wondering who did that for you?
Devendra Banhart Nicole Lawrence. Nicole plays all the pedal steel stuff. Amazing pedal steel player. She also plays some guitar, too. Amazing guitar player. She plays now with Jenny Lewis. Jenny really did something incredible. That song “Psychos” is such a masterpiece. We’re all trying to do Fleetwood Mac, but I think Jenny did finally. It sounds a little like that, but it’s its own song.
AD: Do you want to talk about the people that you worked with on this album? I understand they were all people that you knew from before.
Devendra Banhart: It was. It was a very small crew. It was Samur Khouja, who is an amazing musician and songwriter and poet. He engineered the album. He’s an incredible producer. He and Cate have worked on a lot of records together. And they start a new one in ten days. Stella Mozgawa.
AD: The drummer from Warpaint, right?
Devendra Banhart: Exactly, Warpaint. She also plays with Courtney Barnett. Stella did a lot of the drum programming and played some drums, as did Greg Rogove who is in the band, most of these people are in the band. Todd Dalhoff played a fretless bass. Cate played bass and synth and guitar and piano and sang. And then I did a lot of the other stuff. It was a pretty small crew.
AQD: This is your first album since the COVID lockdown. Was it affected by that?
Devendra Banhart: Well, I made an ambient record during the pandemic with Noah.
AD: Right, we were talking about that.
Devendra Banhart: That was all remotely done. We didn’t see anyone. We didn’t see each other or anyone. So that was very different from this, where we didn’t see anyone else. It was just us and a few people who came to visit now and then.
This was, of course, affected by the pandemic. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I had this sense during the pandemic that the whole world was going to change so dramatically. And I thought what are records even going to be like. I imagined every record was going to be so much about the pandemic.
What I think now is that, of course, that is the case, and records are about that. But since it’s kind of a drag to have somebody singing about the pandemic, you don’t want to be that obvious. So it’s all subtly about that is one thing.
The other thing is that we’re still in it enough, too much to have some real perspective on it. And then the third is that these records are all about the pandemic, but we don’t even realize it.
AD: That’s what I think. Even the records where people are consciously trying to make them not about the pandemic, they still have that shadow on them.
Devendra Banhart: I think that’s the case for sure. The lessons of this shared anxiety and trauma will manifest in more subtle ways for the remainder of our lives. Because we are so consciously aware now of the scientific fact of interbeing and interconnected-ness and the fact that there are these things that we’re sharing. For instance, this thing called oxygen that we’re sharing and that’s going in your mouth and my mouth. All these things that seemed really hippie-dippy and mystical, I think we got concrete proof of that interconnection. That all manifests subtly. There was that dream of a fantastic magnificent, magnification of kindness. That was just going to explode. Well, that’s kind of there.
AD: Also an explosion of meanness at the same time.
Devendra Banhart: Well that’s kind of like why Trump exists. That’s why this resistance is such a caricature of shittiness. You know, like Bolsonaro people are like the bad guys in 1980s movies. And it’s like oh wow, it’s almost like a caricature. I’m anti-and angry, so those things do rise up when there’s something, like the very naïve thing that I just said. But that’s okay. I hope that that can happen.
AD: I was noticing that “Sirens” has a list of things that it’s hard to do lately, and I was wondering if that was pandemic related.
Devendra Banhart: Yes, it’s a to do list of things that are hard to do. It’s all the things that I’m trying to do in my life, and I’m like, wow, this is not easy to do now. So that’s kind of what that was. I wanted it to be a reggae song at first. I imagined it being more like a quiet storm reggae song. In my mind, I’ve always been so into Sade and I really wanted to have a Sade lovers’ rock reggae feeling. I think we went more…well, Greg is Tony Allen-obsessed, which is a good thing, but he took it more…
AD: More of an Afro-beat
Devendra Banhart: More of an Afro-beat place, which I love but at the same time, originally it was supposed to be reggae. I think a lot of my songs start with reggae.
AD: I wanted to ask you about your show in Venezuela this January.
Devendra Banhart: I can’t believe it happened. It’s been over 20 years.
AD: And you’re Venezuelan, or at least partly or grew up there?
Devendra Banhart: I grew up there. My family’s from there. I’m half Venezuelan. My mom is 100% Venezuelan. Really my whole family is there. I have lived there since I was 13 years old. I put out my first record when I was 21 and since then every couple of years it was like, okay, we’re going to have a show in Venezuela. A homecoming show. And it would just fall through and fall through and fall through. It’s been a little over 20 years of hoping that show would happen.
AD: But it’s bizarre that it happened now when Venezuela is in such disarray.
Devendra Banhart: I know! But the politics have always been terrible. They’ve never been good.
AD: Is your family okay? Because it’s been awful. People have been starving to death.
Devendra Banhart: It’s awful. The mass exodus. And the worst part is that for a minute, I was following the president on Instagram, and you could see footage of him, brief shots of the capital, Caracas, he’s like, “Look at this! They’re thriving, my people. Living it up.”
But it’s amazing, if you go to a supermarket, you see two dusty lemons and a couple of canned hams, and that’s it. It’s really, really bad. The long lines, and at one point, they’re just weighing the money. Just counting. But that mismanagement of a country that should be extremely wealthy because of the oil reserves, it’s been bad forever. It’s been super dangerous forever. At one point, it had the highest murder rate on the planet. Sixty-nine homicides a day.
But amidst all that, you have a generation of people that have grown up with that. It was amazing in the 1970s. There was a time when a big art scene was exploding and there were bands that were playing and there were galleries and it wa’s actually a cultural destination. People would go there for the beauty of the landscape and the interesting architecture. That happened in the 1970s. And then it was just gone. Generations, multiple generations were just born into that world and that’s the world that they know. You make do.
That’s what’s so shocking. I know that what I read in the news is real. I know it’s difficult there. I know people are starving. I know people don’t have access to medicine. I know that. Let alone some sort of support system if you’re an artist. I know that’s real, but what I didn’t know is that amidst that, you have people who are the most DIY people I’ve ever met. Every kid I met at that show had their own label and their own clothing brand and they were self-publishing something. They were like, I’m just doing it myself. There’s no support system here. And it’s been shit since I was born. So what am I going to do? I’m just going to self-release it. I’m going to share this with the world. So that was like…I wept. I wept, I wept, I wept, I wept. It was really meaningful to see that generation, and of course, so sad, because can you imagine if they lived in a place that supported what they did?
AD: Yeah, but where is that, because we’re the richest country in the world and we don’t support the arts.
Devendra Banhart: I think it’s in Italy. I think that’s the only place. They’re like, oh, you make art. That’s cool. That’s the only place I’ve ever heard that. In the United States, it’s like, oh, what do you really do?
AD: That’s nice. Where’s the rent?
Devendra Banhart: And anywhere else, they ask, “What is that?” But it meant a lot to play here. It also meant a lot to me, personally, to wear a dress at that show. I started singing in a dress.
AD: I remember you used to wear women’s clothing early on when you were making your first couple of albums.
Devendra Banhart: That’s always been a very safe and comfortable space for me. I’m a straight guy who loves wearing dresses. And that’s it. It’s not so much about …it’s not about sexuality, although it is sexy. And it’s not about gender, although there is a desire to not totally conform to these gender roles, which I’ve never identified with either at its most monochromatic. It’s more about that connection with this mother quality in myself and this feminine side I have within myself. It just feels really good. It feels normal and safe to me.
AD: Do you have a lot of dresses or just a few that you like?
Devendra Banhart: I have about six dresses that I really like and that I wear. In fact, I was wearing a dress yesterday when I had some company. I had Andy Cabic from Vetiver and Alex Bleeker from Real Estate and Marissa Anderson, and we were hanging. And I just went and put on my favorite little black cocktail dress, and it just felt like this is …I feel beautiful and that’s it. And so it meant a lot to wear that dress at that show.
When I started off, I would wear a dress all the time when we were playing. It was super fun. And then through the years, I began to feel free to wear a dress or not. I’ll wear a dress to go to dinner with friends. It’s not like this thing that I do on stage is a schtick. I just wear whatever is right for that show. And for the Venezuela show, I really felt good about wearing that dress because it was for the ten-year-old kid like me who would have liked to see somebody who was like that. I didn’t see people like me when I was a kid, so it would have been nice. Probably the first person I identified with was Boy George.
AD: I was just talking to Anohni about Boy George.
Devendra Banhart: Well I know that Boy George is big for her. And actually I remember “You Are My Sister” on her first—not her first but her big record, I Am a Bird Now. I play guitar on that song. That’s me. Boy George is so otherworldly. But as a kid in Caracas, I never saw anybody that looked like a two spirit, you know? And Boy George was otherworldly. I’d never seen that. But that’s on TV for two seconds.
AD: Is Venezuela culturally conservative?
Devendra banhart: Very much so. But it’s not alone. Many places on earth are very culturally conservative. Many places in the U.S. are. Even in San Francisco, there are homophobic, Trumpy assholes who live two blocks from the Castro. It can be anywhere. And those kinds of safe spaces are rarer and rarer. And we’re fortunate that we live in a bubble or even that the media tries to create a utopian world where it looks like people can be themselves. But most of my friends who happen to be queer people are not safe in 99% of the planet. It’s just a fact. It’s crazy. So it’s not a put-down to Venezuela, but it’s super, super conservative. And extremely homophobic and super repressed. But not a dis. So are most places on earth.
AD: But you’re saying that even with that, there’s this subculture that’s really vibrant.
Devendra Banhart: Absolutely. There’s always going to be that. The most eccentric person I ever met was in China, which is a completely militarized country. Which is culturally unbelievable and I love Chinese people.
I do not love the Chinese government. But the entire system is totally militarized and totally paranoid and dictatorial and oppressive. But even amidst that, the most eccentric person I’ve ever met was this young boy who played a show with us in Shanghai. He walked up wearing a women’s blouse. Huge bellbottoms. Long gorgeous hair. The most anachronistic unicorn imaginable in a place where you’re dressed in grey and trying not to stick out. And he opens up his set rambling, just totally atonal, dissonant, sounds like Jandek and then suddenly he starts playing a riff and then goes “This is the end…doo doo.” [Banhart sings The Doors song.] He opened his set with “The End.” Who does that? So amidst these kinds of oppressive environments, these incredible artists are born, and that’s what I saw with the kids in Venezuela.
AD: Interesting. Tell me about the Kobayashi Issa poem and how you found it and what it means to you?
Devendra Banhart: That’s a pretty famous poem and it goes around in Buddhist spiritual community circles. I think most people probably have it on their fridge.
“This dewdrop world-
Is a dewdrop world,
And yet,
And yet…”
AD: Are you a Buddhist?
Devendra Banhart: Yeah. So it’s a famous poem, but during the pandemic, I came across it again, read it again, and it was so helpful. It was such an exquisitely worded window into this extraordinary, anxious and uncertain existential terror that I was feeling. Which I’d felt all my life but which was magnified and amplified by the isolation and the loss of the pandemic. It was really a time of isolation and loss. You know, Hal Wilner who died so quickly.
AD: He was a friend of yours?
Devendra Banhart: He was a friend. I loved him. And we didn’t get to have a memorial for him until years later. So this isolation and lost time, which is definitely just our lives, that’s part of our lives. That’s not the whole thing, but that’s a big part of it. Suffering is part of the gig. But this magnified it. And this new way of experiencing it, this collective way of experiencing it, was extremely new, and I’d read that poem and I saw it in a different light and I felt that it really encapsulated what I was feeling so well and in so few words. Which is kind of the goal and the hope. You know I can never imagine writing a novel or a movie where things have to make sense for a long time. Having chapters, are you kidding me, it’s insane.
AD: I’m working on a novel now and yes you’re right.
Devendra Banhart: How do you do it?
AD: It’s the timeline problem, getting everything to happen in the right order.
Devendra Banhart: It takes a brilliant person, so hats off.
AD: Well, to succeed at it takes a brilliant person. Anybody can try.
Devendra Banhart: You know what though, but hats off no matter what, because even to take the time to try to do it is incredible. I think about that with painting, which is the other art form that I do.
AD: I was going to ask you about that, because I know you’ve been doing that for a while, but you’ve recently gotten back into it?
Devendra Banhart: Well, you can’t really work on your oil painting when you’re on tour, you know? Oh yeah, after sound check, I’ll bring out my oils. I know some people can do that. I love it. But I don’t. And so this time was a time where I could pick it up. I could work on my oil painting.
My paintings are awful. But I know how much I work on them. I know how much I work on these things. And they come out and they look awful. It looks like it took me two seconds, and I know that. What that has allowed is that I appreciate the shittiest painting on earth more than ever now. Some of the worst painting I’ve ever seen is in some of the world’s nicest galleries. Some of the best paintings are at the Salvation Army. But everything in between. The subject could be the most boring thing. I could care less. Even hyper realist painting. I don’t like any of that. Even if I don’t like it, I so appreciate it. I know how much work this person put into it.
Same with film. Can you imagine the money and the time? So many people. Even the shittiest film. I’m watching the shittiest film and it hurts because you know how much work went into it. But it still gets a gold fucking star sticker for how much work goes into this thing.
A novel, I can’t wait to read your novel.
AD: Hah.
Devendra Banhart: Can you talk about what it’s about?
AD: It’s a sci-fi. It’s about an alien artifact that’s been buried for millennia wakes up and starts terraforming the earth. It’s very bizarre.
Devendra Banhart: I’m right now on the last of the trilogy of the Three Body Problem. I’m on Death’s End. I just started.
AD: That’s an amazing piece of work, though pretty depressing.
Devendra Banhart: Totally. Exactly. But it’s so good.
AD: But I think it’s a really good metaphor for climate, you know, because they have had this problem for hundreds of years and don’t do anything about it? Or don’t do anything helpful.
Devendra Banhart: Absolutely. It really does do a good job exposing these problems, real world problems that we’re having, and then it also does present a world where maybe we can work together. Liu Cixin makes it clear that it’s not just a China problem. Or a U.S. problem, but there’s a lot of cooperation that exists in the book, so it gives it a little bit of a hope there, too. But there are moments that are so depressing.
AD: The idea that if any alien civilization ever found out about another one, they would immediately destroy it is pretty grim.
Devendra Banhart: Exactly. That part, you know what, it could be the most advanced space technology but it’s back to this tribal hunt or be hunted thing. That was really depressing.
AD: Can I just ask you what you’re listening to before we wrap up?
Devendra Banhart: Please, but first, you answer.
AD: That Anohni record is amazing. I really like Meg Baird’s record and Robert Forster. A punk record by a band called the Drin. Lonnie Holly’s record is really good. I like yours a lot.
Devendra Banhart: Thank you. Lonnie Holly’s record is amazing. It’s almost like what it would sound like if Diamanda Galas was a super hippie. They both create real deal ceremony in their music. There’s a very shamanic quality to both of their music. She has a lot of light in that darkness, but he has a lot of darkness in that light. They’re beautiful counterparts. I love that record. I certainly love Meg’s record so much. What was the first one?
AD: Anohni.
Devendra Banhart: Anohni! Masterpiece.
I’ve been listening to Gigi Masin, who has a new record called Dolphin, which is really, really good. There’s a piano player named Gabríel Ólafs I really, really like. I’ve been listening to Beverly Glenn Copeland’s new record. I’m on a huge Paul Horn hunt, and I know we all grew up seeing Paul Horn in the 99 cent section, which is shocking to me. We should send those records into space. So all of Paul Horn’s catalogue I’m always going into. I like Blake Mills’ new record. I really, really love Jelly Road. I finally have gotten into this new band called Being Dead, and then I just yesterday did a deep dive into Ed Askew. I just really love Ed Askew. I love his lyrics. And then I was feeling a little nostalgic so I got into some London Suede, because I was listening to Blur’s new record. Oh Hayden Pedigo’s new record.
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