As we wrote in our previous review, Mal Devisa’s music defies any one genre, instead favouring an organic oscillation between folk, pop, soul and hip-hop, and Kiid is a case in point. ‘Fire’ opens with gentle strummed guitar, Devisa’s vocals carrying things along with thoughts on anxieties and hopes for relief. As the track progresses the vocals grow in fervour, the instrumentation creaking at the seams before unravelling into noise.

“Fire in my brain
will you make it okay?

Does it kill you to know that we’re all dying?
It kills me to know”.

In an album that switches between genre so readily, it is Carr’s lyrics which act as the binding force. ‘In My Neighbourhood’ sees the first hip-hop crossed with pop to create something like tUnE-yArdS, ‘Everyone Knows’ is a near-jazzy number where Carr’s voice takes centre stage, and ‘Live Again’ is an indie folk croon akin to the older Cold Specks releases, though all are linked by the sincere, probing writing and startling vocal range. ‘FAT’ opens with heavy bass and descends into urgent, frenzied verses, only to segue into the sombre, soulful ‘Sea of Limbs’ tracks. Both the intro and the main track see Devisa stretch her vocals to their limits, flickering from breathy whispers to wide, top-of-the-lungs gospel songs that would fill any room. The open heart is matched in the lyrics too, with the main message stated with stirring forthrightness.

“You were solid,
you’re everything they told you could not be and more.
You were solid”

‘Daisy’ is a short, evocative pop song that smoulders along with a solid beat (“Oh Daisy, Daisy, I have seen too much of you / You’re driving me crazy with that bad attitude”), while ‘Forget That I’ is a slow piano ballad which ebbs and flows, falling somewhere between Sharon van Etten and Nina Simone. Closer ‘Dominatrix’ switches the mood again, a frenetic hip-hop song like performance poetry where the mood has been condensed into loops and played behind. The track finds Devisa at her most angry and assured, confident in the truth behind her attack on the white, patriarchal grip on culture.

“Messing around I wrote a masterpiece
enough apologies I got caught up in my dreams.
Now I go by Mal Devisa,
avid rapper she’s a preacher
a non-conformist, non-believer”

Kiid is a personal record and plays like condensed version of life, reaching high and falling low, crackling and bursting and simmering under the surface, at times exploding in urgent streams of consciousness as if the words and thoughts can no longer be held in. This is an album that refuses to be reduced to something easily describable, persevering in it’s complexity against the binarizing forces of anxiety or genre or gender or race. Kiid isn’t a self-doubt record or political record, nor a sad record or a happy record. It’s not jazz or gospel or indie rock. Kiid is everything. Kiid is whatever it wants to be.

You can buy Kiid now from the Mal Devisa Bandcamp page, and Mal Devisa compilation cassette from the DZ Tapes Bandcamp page.

The post Mal Devisa – Kiid appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The album opens with ‘All I Want’, a lush blend of folk and indie rock, the stark guitar warmed by Cantor’s full-bodied vocals which rise and fall from composure to vehemence and back again, creating something lonely yet fierce. A whisper, a shout. ‘Futon’ sees the guitar and bass gather momentum, providing the barroom swagger to match the drunken brashness of the lyrics, in which the narrator calls things as he sees them. Whether this is borne of clarity or anger is unclear, and indeed the momentum wanes by the final lines, as if his conviction drips away or else he begins to feel sorry for its target.

“Washed out of your clothes
Toothpaste and filtered smoke
You walk back into the cold
Howling and alone”

‘Catch and Release Pt. I’ is a mellow love song which segues into ‘Pt. II’, where the electric pulse of bass hints at an eventual climax, growing into a storm of percussion and Cantor’s howled vocals. ‘Call Out’ has a real Magnolia Electric Co. feel, isolation and sadness and fear wrapped within smart writing and swirls of instrumentation, fuelled by the insistent dread of self-doubt and bad feeling to produce something keenly honest and cathartic, yet always coloured with wry self-referential lines about that very process.

“Freakin’ out and I’d like to incinerate my dread
But I’ll fashion a metaphor instead
Like fastening a bomb to our bed
And grieving long before we’re even dead
I should reiterate this is all in my head

I leap from where I stand
I’m falling in, I’m falling in”

‘Bare Light’ is short and succinct, a rapid clatter of percussion and cryptic lyrics, while ‘Wild’ emerges wistful and wishful, the memories of a caged animal ghosting across some half-forgotten landscape. ‘I Could Fall In Love With Silence’ has a sad swagger, Cantor channelling the heart-broke strut of Otis Redding in a song which ebbs and flows from melancholy to affirmation to faraway dreams and round again. The album closes with the title track, which returns to (and expands upon) the opening song in what could either been seen as an epilogue or a direct link back to the beginning, enabling the record to be played in a continuous cycle. Either way, the track continues Cantor’s careful use of strong imagery and metaphor, invoking importance and meaning from words and phrases which might seem overwrought in other hands, and sees what is possibly my favourite writing on the album:

“Time pulls the tide with the moon for hands
While whispers incite my love again
Cacophony glides on ships to the sand
While whispers incite my love again

The dog howls ignite to the sky from the land
While whispers incite my love again
A pinhole of light is all god can command
While whispers incite my love again”

You can buy A Whisper, A Shout now from the Minor Moon Bandcamp page.

The post Minor Moon – A Whisper, A Shout appeared first on Various Small Flames.

RIYL: Fiona Apple, Cold Specks, genre-bending folk

Favourite Tracks:

You can buy 4U right now from Mal Devisa’s Bandcamp page, along with a few other bits and pieces.

P.S. Devisa also records as MAL, which is another direction entirely. Listen below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV6GWUHEBSY

The post Flash Review: Mal Devisa – 4U appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The setlist is superb, although with a back catalogue like CFTPA’s there was small chance of it being anything different. The overwhelming majority of the songs are from Etiquette and Vs. Children, with ‘The Subway Home’ from the older album Pocket Symphonies for Lonesome Subway Cars. Sure, there are favourites missing, but there was always going to be without a five-disc set.

I’ll end up just waxing lyrical if I try to write anymore so I’ll leave it at that. In my humble opinion, Owen Ashworth is one of the best songwriters  from the past decade (I’d include him amongst the best writers full stop), and is someone you owe yourself to get acquainted with*. In Cambridge is available as a digital download or in lovely Coke bottle vinyl from Orindal. His label also do some great merch so have a look at that too.

*I ended up waxing lyrical. Apologies

The post Casiotone For The Painfully Alone – In Cambridge appeared first on Various Small Flames.