by Hugo Reyes (@hvreyes5)
There’s no one in the indie landscape like Mal Devisa. Since becoming a known figure with the success of Kiid in 2016, she has been one the most idiosyncratic voices in the indie landscape, featuring on seminal records from NNAMDI and MIKE to name a few. If you listen to her records, you could see why so many artists would want to work with her. Devisa’s voice soars, beckoning out beyond the speakers for you to listen. All that lies between her vocals on Kiid for the most part was a lone bass guitar, that oftentimes buzzed, really making it feel like a bedroom pop record. Vicious Nonbeliever, the newest release from Mal Devisa, is a natural extension of those collaborations from a few years ago. By pairing up with DJ LUCAS, Devisa fully hones in her vocals, creating some of her best work to date.
From the start of the opener “Never See Me Do It,” you as the listener know this EP will be a little bit different. Devisa makes her point of view pretty clear with the lines of, “white boys want to be hip act poor/They could never take the stress of my life lightly.” It’s one of several different microaggressions that Devisa at least nods towards. These “nods” are terse, calculated, and frank, but Devisa doesn’t just practice terse, talking down to the audience soliloquies. That would take the enjoyment out of why everyone even listens to music in the first place.
“Run Run Run” works as some middle point, using the verse-chorus structure to give the listener some sense of familiarity. She still slips in the occasional death knell like, “life is hip hop”. Even if you miss most of the bars in that verse, that simple phrase, though it can be read as cheesy, cuts through, carrying all the emotional weight of the song.
It’s really the turn of phrases that make Vicious Nonbeliever hard to escape or ignore. DJ LUCAS’ beats help of course, creating an atmosphere for Devisa to thrive, but that’s not what drives an artist like Vagabon to wax poetic about Devisa in a Bandcamp feature. Listening to Devisa feels like an honest discovery, one that is increasingly rare in the music landscape of 2020 and makes you wonder: why the hell is this the first I’m hearing of her?
“Next Stop” is that moment of crystallization, where the listener, myself included, feels fully attuned to every little piece of the song. Specifically, its hearing the plainness of “Fuck an EP/this is the masterpiece/this is for all the kids who look like me”. Everything else snaps into place once these words are uttered.
One would then expect the entire EP to culminate in some grand statement, given that the closer is the title track. It’s not that; instead it's noisy and messy. There isn’t some easy to define narrative to trace out like other tracks. Instead, it is exploratory and hazy, like the soundtrack to a college house party. It’s a confident end by an already adept musician, and makes for an exciting glimpse into what a future record from Devisa could be.