Devendra Banhart's New Album Gives Him "Panic Attacks"

By Kevin O'Donnell

September 9, 2008 6:10 PM ET

Next month, freak-folk icon Devendra Banhart will release the debut record from his new side-project with drummer Greg Rogove, which the two have dubbed Megapuss. But Banhart revealed to Rolling Stone that he's also hard at work at a follow-up to his breakthrough album Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon. So how's the recording process going? "It's fucking painful and torturous," Banhart jokes. "I had a panic attack [the other] night and was shaking." While Banhart's still in the early stages of writing and recording — "How can you talk about the island when you're lost at sea?" he cracks — Banhart does reveal that some songs have a "weird vibe of cowboy songs" while another has an '80s-style electro-pop beat reminiscent of Hall And Oates' "I Can't Go For That." "I think there's a new swelling of basically the collective unconscious deciding, 'Hey, Hall and Oates are pretty cool,'" says Banhart. "They're not guilty pleasures anymore."