Banhart doesn't play blues, though. Oh Me Oh My is instead an eccentric lo-fi guitar-and-vocal disc in the Smog mold. Indeed, Banhart sounds authentically damaged, as though someone has brained him with Skip Spence's Oar. He's just not a very good songwriter. Parts of the album manage to sound artfully disastrous rather than accidentally so, and the tape hiss -- so prominent it might as well have been given its own channel in the mix -- is oddly soothing. But Banhart's keenest musical instinct is for self-destruction. Washed up on the shore of an honest-to-goodness guitar melody, he plants his flag and wails painfully. His stylistic change-ups are limited to sudden bursts of paranormal falsetto. The only other sound on the album is Banhart's occasional hand-clapping, something he does with the steadiness of Matthew Perry at a traffic stop. Oh Me Oh My has the demented patina of a cult-making album, but not the substance or charm of one.
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