Mala

Having eased back significantly since 2009's ambitious What Will We Be, Banhart draws from pre-Beatles concepts of pop and rock on Mala, and writes from distinctly non-punk perspectives such as loving with levity, and aging with grace.

Calling Devendra Banhart’s music freak folk is both lazy and condescending. But damn if that dude’s not freaky and folky. On his eighth album, and first since 2009’s What Will We Be, the singer-songwriter (formerly based in Los Angeles, now in New York) sings in Spanish, pens a song to a 12th-century mystic/saint, and…

The incomparable Venezuelan-American songwriter returns, with an uneven record redeemed by moments of clarity.

Over the past decade, the original inhabitants of the freak-folk forest have mostly broken free of those tired genre…

This month's album releases reviewed by the Evening Standard's music critics

Check out our album review of Artist's Mala on Rolling Stone.com.

At a certain point, the path got stranger for Devendra Banhart.

Since his 2002 debut LP, Oh Me Oh My..., a glorious tangle of lo-fi tape hiss and acoustic vignettes, Devendra Banhart has traversed myriad stylistic avenues.

Mala attests to a discipline that was absent in Banhart’s recent, loopier ventures.

Devendra Banhart's taste for bathos and anachronism ensures that even his tiniest songs have character, writes <strong>Kate Mossman</strong>

Album Reviews: Devendra Banhart - Mala

Devendra Banhart has never been afraid to push boundaries and mix genres. Still, of all the ways the once-prolific songwriter could have chosen to return, releasing a dance album is surely one of the least likely.