Devendra Banhart & Noah Georgeson – Refuge For over two decades Devendra Banhart has been collaborating with multi-instrumentalist Noah Georgeson, who in turn ended up producing most of his albums. But on their newest project, both musicians wrote and recorded their parts separately at the height of the pandemic before combining them into a single product. This earned Georgeson top billing, but more importantly resulted in the icy, ambiance that permeates the record and the circumstances of its design. Maybe it’s the added instrumentation from guests like harpist Mary Lattimore or maybe it’s the result of two people on an inevitably similar wavelength, but Refuge sounds like the work of a singular artist, if not just a singular vision. It’s also here that Banhart may finally escape the freak-folk tag that’s bound him to the eclecticism that’s permeated his entire career. Even his most accomplished albums were bogged down by tracks that demanded his loose, playful side, forcing B...
a subjective look at objective sounds