devendra banhart - ma devendra banhart - ma devendra banhart - ma devendra banhart - ma devendra banhart - ma by Fatima Jafar After many recurrent listens on the tube, in my bedroom, and on a plane over an ocean, Ma— the newest album of Venezuelan-American artist Devendra Bahnart— now comfortably sits in the position of being my favourite out of all of his works. The album, released in September 2019, is a confident and unwavering expression of love and grief, of mourning and reverence, that does not shy away from jumping into the sticky puddles of unending sadness or compassion that are often so hard to navigate, let alone verbalise. Banhart manages to write and compose thirteen songs that each seem to celebrate and lament various slices of the experiences of growing older, facing the deaths of friends and family members, and wanting to have a family— and a home— of one’s own. The album begins with ‘Is This Nice?’, a song that juxtaposes plucky guitars, swelling violins and Banhart’s crooning vocals to open up the album with a deeply self-assured pace, sampling John Lennon’s ‘Beautiful Boy’ to create a lullaby-like rhythm that sets the scene for the themes of parenthood and nostalgia that continue throughout the album. In ‘Memorial’, Banhart’s eerie vocals seemingly echo in a hollow, sacred space as he sonically carves out a solemn elegy for a loved one who has died, using the tune of Leonard Cohen’s ‘One of Us Cannot Be Wrong’ as a backbone for approaching the theme of death. Banhart sings “I know it don’t work that way/But maybe you’ll come back some day”, encapsulating the sense of disbelief that comes with a life being cut short, and the inability to comprehend how death cuts through linear time with such a jarring stroke. In frequently referencing other artists throughout this album— from John Lennon and Leonard Cohen to Carole King in ‘Taking a Page’, Banhart imbues each song with a kind of authority and timelessness that bleeds throughout the album: we begin to understand that the themes Banhart covers in his songwriting are universal ones; emotions that countless artists have explored
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