Banhart has a whole lotof heart

Last spring Bright Eyes' It's Morning, I'm Wide Awake let me have it -- it was that cold bucket of water over the head that opens your eyes long before the sun is up. The Shins and Iron & Wine (both featured on that one soundtrack for that "Garden"-something movie) weren't the only ones making folk music beyond that of those making it 30 years earlier.\nOne or two clicks away on www.amazon.com and I'm sampling the music of Devendra Banhart. A folkadelic troubadour discovered by Young God Records owner Michael Gira, Banhart is still young at 24. Yet on 2004's Rejoicing in the Hands, for example, he and his acoustic sounded as world-weary as mid-lifers-still-going Springsteen and Dylan.\nOpposed to the bare-boned vintage sound of his previous works (the first of which was recorded on a four-track), Banhart's latest and greatest, Cripple Crow, is a communal affair of the so-called "freak-folk" family -- a collective of likeminded acid-twee compatriots whom Banhart has helped to bring together.\nThe album, Banhart's fourth in three years, celebrates this camaraderie starting with the cover art, which shows Banhart perched in front of a Sgt. Peppers'-sized assortment that includes members of CocoRosie, Feathers, Veviter and Noah Georgeson. It is singular and grand in its own right.\nAs for the music, Cripple Crow is very great. With a voice that's as warbly as Antony of Antony and the Johnsons and as maudlin as Jeff Buckley's, Benhart croons his way through 75 minutes of 22 tracks ranging from the Spanish-tongued sing-along goodness of "The Beatles" (it's one of five Spanish-sung tracks) to the vintage, otherworldly sophistication of "Dragonflys" to the Iron & Wine-y (pun intended) tenderness of "Queen Bee."\nThe album's length is close to that of Sufjan Stevens' epic Illinois. Though not as cohesive as Illinois nor Banhart's previous works, the disjointed feel of the album works to its advantage. \nAs a point of reference, Cripple Crow is as comforting an album as Nick Drake's Pink Moon (1972) on a restless starlit night. It's a lush, transitional work, and one that kids our age will refer to in another 30 years.