Megapuss
Surfing

The cover. What a cover. Let's not be moralists or hypocrites, this cover speaks directly to my lower regions (and not just mine, I think), and that's why I listened to this record.

What I have in my hands is the umpteenth playful side project, not at all pretentious (but is it really?) and openly ironic by Devendra Banhart, here accompanied by Greg Rogove from Priestbird (who is the other one, the one without a knife) and various adventure companions including Fabrizio Moretti from the Strokes, born, as per the press release from the founders of the "megatopa" from two friends who found themselves inventing silly song titles and then writing them.

In fact, Devendra Banhart's fortune, aside from his undisputed merit as a songwriter, is having created a world, which we would too hastily define as a nostalgic hippie world, because he manages to combine a childlike taste for melodies, along with melancholy, joy, sensuality, and irony, to which he is now always associated. We don't know how much he is just acting or genuinely is like that (I mean, if he really is, oh my), but it's really take it or leave it.

So, even when he declares that an album is a joke, we don't know to what extent it's true. Then, as a joke, the album opens with a very beautiful retro-sounding soul piece ("crop circle jerk '94"), continues with a happy moment of absurdness ("Duck People Duck Men"), and then spills over into the usual hippie handclapping ("To love within'"). There is no shortage of a 60s beat piece ("Hamman") and a doo-wop revisitation directly from Roy Orbison's drawer (or from Dirty Dancing?), "chicken tits". Some have even bothered Frank Zappa for the crazier and more chaotic tracks of the album ("Mr Meat") but I didn’t find all that effort.

As much as all this weirdness sometimes becomes irritating because it’s a bit too clever, it's hard to resist the trashiness of a track like "Adam & Steve" complete with a quote from George Michael's "Careless whisper" (abundantly revisited in the ultra-trash video, go see it), or to "theme from hollywood" complete with meows, or to "gun on his hip". Here we surrender, and either you love it, or you hate it.

And just when you're about to send Devendra and his merry hippie crew to hell, what you expect from him emerges, a dreamy track like "Surfing", beautiful, hypnotic, which recalls the most lunar moments of Brian Wilson, and the last 3 songs, especially "Another mother" (embellished with a vocal insert by Anthony) which are really beautiful and intense, so much that they clash with the rest of the album due to their melancholic tone.

I had all the resistances in the world. But I give up, I like it and I am in love with it. Even before having seen the back cover.