iTunes

Opening the iTunes Store.If iTunes doesn't open, click the iTunes application icon in your Dock or on your Windows desktop.
iTunes

iTunes is the world's easiest way to organize and add to your digital media collection.

We are unable to find iTunes on your computer. To preview and buy music from Cripple Crow by Devendra Banhart, download iTunes now.

Already have iTunes? Click I Have iTunes to open it now.

I Have iTunes Free Download
iTunes for Mac + PC

Cripple Crow

Devendra Banhart

View More By This Artist

Open iTunes to preview, buy, and download music.

iTunes Review

The 23-year old pied piper of the Freaky Folk movement, San Francisco-based Devendra Banhart mixes and matches musical styles at will. This sprawling 22-song collection, his fourth studio album, is a happily eclectic mix of folk, blues, and reggae, with violins, sitars, flutes, and cellos coloring Banhart’s majestic world. Recorded in three weeks in March of 2005, Cripple Crow reflects the sounds of an emerging Spring with its fluid acoustic guitars and bucolic flutes underpinning the laid-back vibe of “Pensanda Enti” and flowing rhythms of “Now That I Know,” while “Long Haired Child” is still spooked by winter’s vicious chill and a haunted vibrato-drenched vocal from Banhart. A bevy of guest musicians from other free-spirited acts – Espers, Queens of Sheba, and Vetiver – lends the album a communal vibe best expressed in the album’s many choral-like backing vocals. “Hey Mama Wolf” could be a children’s tune for the new millennium, and “Chinese Children” is a silly three-chord sing-along romp. It’s the sound of people sitting around a campfire enjoying the moment.

Customer Reviews

aesthetics will only get you so far...

im sorry, but this album is a seriously negative departure from banharts innocent and simplistic meanderings in previous albums. i am aware that there has been a process of evolution occuring. nino rojo was certainly a stepping stone to Cripple Crow, however banharts seeming obsession with expanding and including such a wide array of styles and influnces seems rather contrived. it is not that this album is dissapointing as a departure from form, it is the loss of content, initially, which leaves me feeling duped. the sensitive and cutting observations and imagination that banhart brandished on his previous albums has significantly retracted. instead we are served up a wailing, over confident, goofy, and much more overt version that leaves only his suped up, amateur "world" music experiments to be reckoned with. it is unfulfilling, further, in that banhart shows less humor and some serious refrences emerge in its place. No doubt Banhart is in a place to effectively communicate to a whole new generation of misplaced, love movement inspired, neo-hippy types, yet he wastes this position. there are superficial refrences to the war, yet very little follow up as to what they mean. i do not think banhart is, in any way, a politically concered musician and i do not know his personal beliefs. however, there is something irresponsible in making any kind of art, in our current world situation that does not adress, either implicitly or explicitly, the context in which it exists. obviously banhart is interested in whisking away our inner children from modern society to a place of fantasy (see Tyrannosaurus Rex), however it is clear that the inner child has to have his proper hipster credentials in place before taking the trip. this, sort of special knowledge of aesthetics is my major concern with Cripple Crow...I understand that banhart is very knowledgable of his musical ancestory, however it takes more than an understanding of the styles to make music that beomes a part of that history. this is a stylistic extension of the most conventional form...Mr. Banhart please dont start making "fashion music", i do believe you have a gift...dont abuse it for an image. -Bjhorn-Stein Meda

Shockingly good, and sometimes just plain shocking.

This album's great in most places, and ultimately listenable throughout. "Little Boys" is the most shocking song I think I've ever heard, and is definitely not for everybody (although, Devendra claims it was written from the perspective of a schizophrenic hermaphrodite, and was intended to shock, so the album wouldn't be played at Starbucks). The rest of the album, however, is silly, lovable brilliance.

There's nothing crippled about this album!

I mean this crow breaks free of it's brace and takes the IV out of its arm and flies away happily into the sunset. Banhart makes it known that he's the king of freak folk while Joanna Newsom rightfully has the spot of queen. This album goes to sweet, to strange, to sweetly strange, and sounds so vidly charming tears will swell in anyone's weary eyes. The song "Little Boys" is worth and thrill seekers dough!

Biography

Born: May 30, 1981 in Houston, TX

Genre: Alternative

Years Active: '00s, '10s

Growing up in Caracas, Venezuela, and Los Angeles, Devendra Banhart was always playing music and drawing. But it wasn't until his brief stay at the San Francisco Art Institute that the disciplines became his constant companions. With the encouragement of poet and SFAI professor Bill Berskon, Banhart began experimenting with all kinds of art. He also began recording songs around that same time, usually on shoddy, hand-me-down four-track machines. Brief, half-finished, or written in stream-of-consciousness...
Full Bio

Top Albums and Songs By Devendra Banhart

Listeners Also Bought

Become a fan of the iTunes and App Store pages on Facebook for exclusive offers, the inside scoop on new apps and more.