Pitchfork

Remember what Devendra Banhart was like circa The Black Babies? The humble, ineffably weird lo-fi arrangements? The submerged warble? The gray-hued melodies meandering through vaguely sinister atmospheric noises like surf through pylons? If not, Blake Miller-- less memorably named than Banhart but just as rudimentarily striking-- is here to remind you. While I'd be down to hear Miller take a stab at Pavement's slacker classic of the same name, his "Cut Your Hair" stands on its own merits-- as retiring as its namesake is feisty, it's one of those songs that fills you up with compact quietude. A queasily bent tone launches a tumbledown arpeggio into an ocean of tape hiss. "I was lost at sea," Miller breathes into your ear, his full-bodied falsetto sounding credibly sans-compass. He bolsters his loose approximation of a melody with shimmering caesurae and mysterious updrafts, then rolls into a shaggy shuffle as he lays down we-are-Siamese-if-you-please-type vocal harmonies. Goes to show that lo-fi freak-folk still works beautifully when there's a unique charisma shining through the murk, despite the crowdedness of the freaky field.