Kevin Bronson on May 19th, 2013

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By Gabriel Jones

Devendra Banhart’s show at the Fonda Theater on Thursday night suggested an artist in transition; even in his movements on stage – he’s normally largely stoic and motionless in concert – he looked as if he were trying to shake free of his old skin, jerking one leg spastically back and forth or wriggling around frantically during otherwise seemingly earnest lines.

Banhart’s new release, “Mala,” similarly comes off like a soundtrack for transformation. “Golden Girls,” the first song on the album, opened the set with a languorous guitar line that echoed Low or The xx with its slow, careful buildup – “get on the dance floor ”¦ get on the dance floor” repeated softly, hypnotically – that stopped just short of release before shifting into another new song, ”˜Für Hildegard von Bingen’ (“she’s been dreamin’ relocation”), about picking up and leaving no forwarding address.

• ||| Photos by Laurie Scavo

Banhart sings now in a voice that at times sounds flattened and dried and nearly squeezed of emotion, reminiscent of Julian Casablancas (coincidentally, he was also backed by the Strokes’ drummer Fab Moretti), letting his normally soulful voice take on more of a wry, sardonic, guttural snarl.  He also reworked the sound of many of his earlier songs – at the end of “Bad Girl,” for example, he sang the closing lines “Mama I ain’t waiting / No I ain’t waiting / but I’m still holding on,” usually screamed out in agony, instead in a soft, resigned warble, and later he played a version of “I Feel Just Like a Child” that sounded like it was a cover of “Bizarre Love Triangle” for the festival circuit.

The middle third of the set was for the coffeehouse crowd, with Banhart alone on stage crooning with his guitar and going through all sorts of complicated overdetermined emotions. He sang out “I’m going to die of loneliness” from “My Dearest Friend” while he had what appeared to be happy feet, at times nearly weeping as he sang, other times shrieking jokingly, and overall performing with a looseness not usually seen in past shows. And in the end his latest incarnation as an artist seems perfectly suited for the age of post-irony, with its multiple layers of playfulness, earnestness and self-mockery. There’s a heart in there somewhere, although sometimes it feels like a shell game to guess which one it’s under. The last third and encore saw Banhart as showman and bandleader, including the obligatory rousing “Carmensita” for the closer, and drummer and longtime collaborator Gregory Rogove even sat in for a song to the audience’s and band’s delight, a rare moment of pure, unmixed emotion during the show.

Brazilian guitarist Rodrigo Amarante (of Little Joy and Los Hermanos, and also currently playing in Banhart’s band) opened the night with a half-hour set of melancholy, sweetly moving ballads. On taking the stage he remarked with a half-smile “It’s bright in here!” –  and, indeed, his songs feel more at home in a dimly lit cafe or in a dark theater playing over the closing credits of a foreign film about love and loss. Amarante sings in a voice that’s warm and gentle over a soft, slow guitar, the sort of music that makes you want a cigarette even if you don’t smoke; his songs are about the flirtations that nearly went somewhere or went too far, half-romantic and half-plaintive, written about the moments between the end of heartbreak and the beginning of hope again, and in their simple, heartfelt, almost throwback emotions provided a poignant contrast to Banhart’s shapeshifting, layered irony.