Searching for Bart Davenport

iTunes Review

Berkeley bard Bart Davenport wears many musical faces; with Honeycut (who you can hear when booting up Mac OSX) he blends electro-funk and soul, while the more organic sounding Incarnations has him playing breezy strum ‘n’ bass. His solo live performances are usually performed with a four-piece baroque-pop band or just by himself with a couple guitars. Fans of the latter will fall hard for Searching for Bart Davenport, a stripped-down collection of acoustic covers that plays as intimately as his acoustic shows. He opens with Broadcast’s “Come On Let’s Go,” peeling away all the ornate Joseph Byrd-inspired effects to reveal the song’s inner beauty. He also takes on some bygone British folk with the Incredible String Band’s “You Get Brighter,” boasting some amazing fretboard work before singing Bridget St. John’s “Autumn Lullaby” with whispered inflections. Bart brilliantly mashes the lyrics to Jackson C. Frank’s “Blues Run the Game” into the chords for the Moore Brothers’ “Kid Ivy.” If you enjoyed Vetiver’s Thing of the Past, Searching for Bart Davenport plays like an intimate companion to that album.