Devendra Banhart: Cripple Crow

Herald rating: * * * *

Whatever Devendra Banhart is on, he has finally found the right dosage. His previous albums - debut in 2002, two from last year - were easy to dismiss as grand hippychild indulgences.

That first offering was titled Oh Me Oh My the Way the Day Goes By the Sun Is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Lovesongs of the Christmas Spirit. You get the picture.

Now, on Cripple Crow, he's started to make strange sense. It's not that he's left his early weirdness behind. Here there are 22 tracks. Many feature various insects in their title and a worrying number the word "child".

A couple are sung in Spanish - Banhart is from San Francisco via Texas via Venezuela - and both Pensando Enti and Quetate Luna suggest him as a sort of Ziggy Feliciano.

But this time Planet Devendra is just a more inviting and colourful place. It helps that he's got a band behind him fleshing things out. Stylistically, he's using that double-album running-time to stretch himself in a multitude of directions.

Cripple Crow wanders through protest songs which seem relics of an anti-war movement of a previous conflict.

He delivers sweet piano ballads, doo-wop, soul (Long Haired Child which also echoes Bowie's Sound and Vision while casting around for a potential mother of his firstborn), and tabla-powered Indopop (Lazy Butterfly).

Elsewhere, he has time for both poignant melancholy on Beatles ("Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are the only Beatles in the world ... "), and lovely lyrically direct folk songs like Heard Somebody Say and When They Come.

And to round things out, there is a sideline in entertaining nonsense, whether it's Chinese Children or the 50s rock'n'roll-powered creepy-but-funny Little Boys.

Somehow it all hangs together like a pleasingly addled daydream. It may lack for focus and meander up some musical dead-ends. But Banhart's guileless approach and sense of wonder is infectious throughout.

Label: Shock