Classic/Modern Influence Track of the Week-Richard Thompson vs. Devendra Banhart

Time for another classic versus modern track (ive decided to do this every Monday). So today we’ve got two tracks from the genre of freak folk, a micro genre of folk music that takes traditional folk structures and song writing to convey odd sentiments. The two artists compared are Richard Thompson, Austrian folk singer who many consider to be a pioneer of freak folk and Devendra Banhart the modern flag bearer of the genre. Thompsons 1952 Vincent Black Lightening, is an extremely moving song, beautiful guitar work and great lyrics, very sad but good. It tells the story of a boy growing up who falls in love with a girl and a motorcycle, dies, and then gives away the motorcycle to the girl. The strange parts about the song are the pacing, the boy James meets and gets married to the girl after only two verses, but the takes three whole verses to die. Some of the lyrical choices are strange too, the listener is never quite sure what the song is about. Is it about the girl, whose only character trait is that she has red hair and is referred to as Red Molly the whole song, is it James, the guy who dies but is hard to care for because he is described as a miscreant and a thief, or is it the motorcycle, which is really the focus of the song with an entire verse dedicated to how awesome it is. More likely it’s a combination of those three things, the guy, the girl, the motorcycle, and how each has to do with the other. The second track is another tune that on the surface might seem like a sweet little song but on a deeper level has some real quirks to it. The song is a tune dedicated to the narrator’s mother, and foremost it should be noted that an average person probably doesn’t refer to their mother as Mama Wolf. Another thing that an average person probably doesn’t do is mention wombs all that often, which Banhart does in this song and others on the album Cripple Crow far too many times (I could guarantee that his thesaurus has that page bookmarked). Aside from that the song, and the whole album have a great sort of campfire atmosphere to them, like it’s not hard to imagine the crackling sound of a fire in the background or the baited breath of listeners, who often chime in for a sing along and give feedback inbetween songs creating a great feeling of “not alone”. While it might have been easier to compare two songs like Thompson’s Psycho Street and Banhart’s Just Like a Child, both are very strange and more prototypical of freak folk, the two tracks that I did compare show restraint for both artists and how skilled they both are at song writing.