Friday 08/09/06 Devendra Banhart, Vetiver @ Academy 2, Manchester

It’s hard to believe that Manchester’s Academy 2 is the right size venue for tonight’s performance. A crowd bustle impatiently at the bar, conveniently located in a separate room and requires the constant and tedious exchange of tickets with the doormen. The floor is packed tight, people stand shoulder to shoulder, wall to wall, stage to door…the constricted surroundings feel, quite simply –wrong.
 
Perhaps it’s post summer festival blues and a longing for beautiful music under the stars that has us feeling a little uncomfortable. Yet the unease soon disappears when support from Vetiver fills the stage with Gram Parsons tinged vocals and an all consuming presence not too dissimilar to the melancholic delights of My Morning Jacket’s ‘At Dawn.’ A girl turns, bright eyes and full smiles, and looks straight at us, ‘its like we’re all sitting on the same cloud’ –indeed.
 
Devendra Banhart steps up alone with his guitar, there’s a brief hush of anticipation, and he opens with ‘The Body Brakes’ from Rejoicing in the Hands. Dulcet Vocals fill the space. The lights lower and rise, and Devendra’s joined by two members of Vetiver and the rest of his band.  The first half of his set is decidedly subdued, the crowd barely moving are fixated on the stage and the honeyed sounds of ‘Dogs They Make Up The Dark,’ ‘Fall’ and ‘We all Know’ have a hypnotizing effect.

In his generosity, Devendra picks a member of the crowd to play one of their very own, and a brave human being faces the crowd, thanks Devendra profusely, and then belts out a mediocre attempt at stardom. But all credit to him, the guy’s got balls. As the set progresses, the man steady build of pace from track to track encourages lucidity in movement, both on stage and off. ‘Little Yellow Spider’ from the album Nino Rojo is a close contender for set highlight but is beaten to the post in encore by Cripple Crow’s ‘Long Haired Child’ which sees Devendra at his most animated.

An enticing, magical and sublime gig, then, that perfectly showcases the full breadth of Devendra’s poetic talent and his charismatic stage performance.