by Caroline Nieto (@caroline.nieto)
After releasing her 2016 debut album, Kiid, Mal Devisa identified herself as an artist to watch. For a first project, she needed no introduction—Kiid is steeped in the self-assuredness of a writer far beyond her years. Her songs house the tenacious beats of 90s hip-hop; languid, blues-like melodies, and the indelible touch of Deja Carr herself.
Mal Devisa’s first project since this debut prolongs the path that Kiid forged, acting as an archive of her musical life since its nativity. Palimpsesa is a collection of songs written between 2015 and 2025 that chronicles Carr at all ages and stages of expression. The album came to be after signing with Topshelf Records, when one of the label’s founders, Kevin Duquette, suggested she dig into her vault and properly record her demos. Creating a compilation record with such a fresh career is a rare opportunity, so even after her initial intimidation at the project’s scope, Carr took it in stride. The name Palimsesa comes from Carr’s recent fixation on the word palimpsest coupled with her distaste for the word’s suffix. When a friend suggested she change the end to -sesa to cohere with the end of her stage name, she knew she’d found the name of the record. She chose aptly—each song leaves an impression of a person, place, or passion of the past.
Mal Devisa by POND Creative
The main task of creating Palimpsesa was the recording process. Deja Carr and recording have always had a symbiotic relationship—while she brings some songs to the studio fully formed, she often depends on the studio environment to fill in the gaps in her writing. The coagulation of thoughts between herself and her producers tends to nurture a song to its full potential, where each track is flavored with their blend of influences. Working with Marco, her producer on “New Eardrums” and “Sunrise,” creates an instant synergy in the studio, where the two can create a song like the former, a heavy-hitting rap song, and the latter, a subdued guitar track. Carr points to the beats Marco produces in the studio as a large influence for how a specific song might feel. Coupled with the hip-hop foundations of her other producer, Lucas, real time collaboration was an essential aspect of the feel of each song. According to Carr, the varied moods of her songs are “never much of a mindful choice,” but the outcome of working with other musicians.
Palimpsesa utilizes the recording process as an ode to the settings of each song’s incitement. “Raw as the Hands of the Sun” was recorded in a “weird basement in Amherst,” and is the only song she recorded entirely by herself. A comfortable chatter of voices can be heard in the background, and the lo-fi quality strikes an intimacy between Carr and the listener. The song is interrogative, hushed as Carr sings, “See, I haven’t seen myself in the mirror/And I’ll be myself ‘til myself gets clearer.”
Almost every song on the record has some singular quirk or anecdote attached. The song “Forest” was first recorded when Carr was in high school, when, as she puts it, “met a guy named Forest at a show and wrote a song about it.” For such a brusque description, the lyrics are strangely affectionate, beginning with, “Forest, don’t you go home/I really need you here.” It’s a testament to Carr’s habit of wearing her heart on her sleeve, a trait she carries with her in every song she writes.
Deja Carr’s songwriting often starts from the minute details of life and gives space for them to grow. Since she was a child, Carr had a tendency to wax poetic whenever she was given the chance. She recalls a poetry assignment from elementary school that she took extremely seriously—as a precocious young poet, she earned herself the nickname, “Deja ‘free verse’ Carr.” Even now, her lyricism is freeform, never landing on one theme long enough to get comfortable. She writes to soothe her inner poet, unconcerned with what might appease an audience.
Carr’s experience with playing music also stems from a childhood passion. Growing up, she attended jazz camps in the summer, and she went to a performing arts high school for vocal performance. An affinity for jazz runs through her blood: her grandfather was the drummer Bruno Carr, who played with the likes of Ray Charles, Herbie Mann, and Aretha Franklin. While Carr humbly notes that he was mainly a session musician, she still finds herself giddy when she meets a musician that worked with him or knows his name.
Carr’s jazz foundations led to her joining an all-female funk band called Who’da Funk It? while she was still in high school. Singing with the band is how her voice developed into the force it is today, the gritty and impassioned tone that’s heard in songs on the album like “You Are All That You Need.” In accounting for her more downtempo tracks, Carr says, “I listen to R&B every day,” and that style has become second nature to her musical language. What Carr decides to write is typically a reflection of what she is listening to at a given moment. Her songs are chock full of references, both musical and otherwise—in songs like “You Are My Sunshine” and “Next Stop,” Carr namedrops Sonic Youth and Pablo Neruda, both of whom are inspirations of hers. This juxtaposition may seem nonsensical for anyone else, but a Mal Devisa track truly contains multitudes, and it’s this distinct voice that allows Carr to reference her own work, like in “Next Stop” where she says, “I’m Reed’s feature and he’s in a Mal Devisa t-shirt.”
It’s taken a while for Carr to get to a place where she can look back at her catalog with affection, but part of the process of creating Palimpsesa was revisiting her phases of life as told through her songs. She sometimes fears scrutiny over lines she wrote at nineteen years old, in particular a line in “Next Stop” that follows, “Like Brad Pitt and Jolie I adopt the blackness/Give it my last name and wear it like (no) blackface.” It’s a lyric she would never write now, a reflection of a spunky teenager learning to speak up for herself. But Carr lays all of her cards on the table with Palimpsesa, even songs she wrote when the world was a different place. It isn’t lost on her that she’s released albums in 2016 and 2025, both years with precarious political climates. Carr is steadfast in asserting that she won’t shy away from writing about Blackness or her identity, even when it may piss some people off.
With Palimpsesa, Deja Carr was tasked with dipping into her demos and creating a record that represented her. At only 28, Carr is already extremely accomplished—she’s signed with Topshelf, toured with Sampha, and created a compilation record—but she hasn’t stopped writing, looking ahead to releasing a record of new songs. It’s a marvel how she’s able to keep songwriting so fresh, never tiring of the creative process. Carr embodies a line from “I Could Tell,” one the more minimalist tracks on the record, where she sings, “I could create space for natural thoughts and creation.” That’s all she’s been trying to do with Palimpsesa, and that fertile environment is heard everywhere in the record. It’s a tidal wave of memory, it’s a trip through a musical genius’s mind, and it’s a true reflection of who Mal Devisa has become.