Devendra Banhart
Here at the plankton society, we’ve always felt an itchy imperative to introduce a basic “you really need to know this cool shit” quagmire of information to our reading guests. It’s the online equivalence of ambitious Orchard Road pamphleting, only without the handy rubbish bin ten steps away. We’re sorry about throwing shit at you, but hey, at least it’s good shit. So to kick off our sparkling new office of “The Things You Really Should Know”, we present the audiophonic-pornographical poetry of Devendra Banhart.
We first heard Banhart a few months ago, and were completely blown away by the splendid hark back to the Folk Revival Movement. His songs demystify us through lyrical fiction tales and wholesome basic melodies – a killer 2 hit combo that smacks the musical senses out from our sedimentary synapses. It’s a raw-ish embroidery between Eagle-Eye and dare we say, that other all American rounder – Amos Lee. Most of all, Banhart’s music just makes us feel good inside. If you’re just starting on the music, try the short but lovely “At the Hop”, before contemplating the anti-essentialist discourse of “Chinese Children” and the joyful conundrums of “I Feel Like A Child”. Yes goslings, we feel that you really should know, Devendra Banhart.
1984
Too often, sinister threats to the bill of rights, to freedom of the mind, are concealed under the patriotic cloak…
Adlai Stevenson
My nationality is reality.
Kool G Rap
You see! CCB lah!
The Void Deck
I see you on CNA exercising your hegemonic ways on us – your cattled-sheep of a nation-state, your bumbling denizens of 1984, your fellow Singaporeans.
You tell me the determent factor to a good man is to give him 2.2 million dollars, and I nod my head.
You tell me everything is okay, that my micro-perception of life can never fully comprehend “a good time” for a change. I nod my head.
You tell me “look at the private sector”, opportunities are too exciting, too thrilling, for people to join your worthy white robes of mercy. I nod my head.
Would it please you to know, that I humbly bend forward as well, so that in Sa’at’s words, I may be inexhaustibly “fucked senseless”?
Now.
I urge you to consider your voting demography in 5 years. I urge you to know and understand that we are not a generation who forgets easily. We are the opuses of your fine elitist tuning machinery – who never quite made it. We have crossed mountains, we have seen democracies, we have studied Marx and Mills, and we know. We are the products of your entrepreneurship endeavors, your creative thinking hell-shits, your fucking liberalist teachings. And we have come to see the black and the white of it all, and the shadows that lurk in-between.
And rather quite unfortunately,
we will vote
one day.
